18.50" x 23.50" sight size Debra Yoo received a degree in Fine Art and the Humanities from the University of Chicago, strongest influences were painting professor Vera Klement and the proximity of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her undergraduate work was primarily abstract, deeply influenced by Matisse, Russian icon painting, Robert Motherwell, and Barnett Newman. After graduation she decided to pursue a growing interest in painterly realism. At that time Minimalism and Conceptualism were dominant, but there was (as there is still) a core of distinguished American artists who practiced the kind of contemporary realism based on modernism. Matisse continued to be a guiding light, but she also became interested in the work of Larry Rivers, Louisa Matthiasdottir, Edward Hopper, Richard Diebenkorn, John Singer Sargent, and contemporary still life painters in general. After seven years of work, she was offered representation by Jan Cicero Gallery in Chicago. Still life comprised the majority of her paintings for many years, with occasional dips into figure and landscape. Her works have been displayed at the Jan Cicero Gallery in Chicago, Andrea Marquit Fine Arts in Boston, and Greenhut Galleries in Portland, ME.