I’m Pam Y. Rim, a Taiwanese American, Texas-raised, New York City-based painter with a background in industrial engineering. Inspired by the narrative scale and symbolism of the Old Masters, I approach painting with a systems-oriented mind, building each collection around a central question and developing interconnected imagery, materials, and symbols to explore it as a visual epic.

My most recent collection, Divine Maps, explores my return to faith, a feeling of worthiness, and an awareness of divine presence through symbolic imagery and imagined seascapes. Before that, Sake of Beauty explored my personal understanding of beauty and its relationship to identity and intimacy.

I am currently developing Bound to Wander, a body of work exploring the struggle between human will and divine direction. Throughout the collection, waves, again, represent divine presence, while horses and Western figures emerging from the waves, embody instinct, will, and the desire to chart one’s own course. Drawing from Chinese calligraphy and ink alongside Western oil painting and the landscapes and visual language of the American West, I bring the artistic traditions of my cultural inheritance into conversation with the place that shaped me.

Across my practice, I turn lived experience into mythology, creating visual worlds that examine the forces that shape my life.