WAVE
By Suzy Lee
Chronicle Books/ Hardcover/
40 pages/ US$10.87
(S$15) from amazon.com
or $22.95 (without GST) in bookstores next month

Korean artist Suzy Lee did not want her art to be confined in galleries, so she decided on a medium that was more available, popular and inexpensive.

'Think books in the place of canvases,' says the 34-year-old, who is the author and illustrator of seven children's books, most of them wordless and paying close attention to the aesthetic.

Her latest, Wave, and the first to be published in Singapore, revolves around a familiar seaside experience: approaching and then retreating from waves as they roll and spill on the beach.

With a discerning eye for shades of colour, she fuses bold charcoal strokes and acrylic painting into a spread of white, blue and black that is soothing balm for the eyes.

The results are textured and layered, but the artist's intention is to produce more than just a children's book.

Lee, who received her bachelor's degree in painting from Seoul National University and a master's degree in book arts from Camberwell College of Arts, London, explains: 'Book arts is derived from the conceptualist branch of fine art. Book artists like myself focus their energies on concept, which includes the choice of the book's shape.'

She resents the identical look of books on bookshelves: 'It's such a turn-off that almost every one of them looks the same.

'I wanted Wave to be long horizontally, wide and panoramic, the same as when we face the sea in real life.'

It is evident that she has taken into account every physical detail of the book itself, right down to the fold between opposing pages.

A little girl inches across the centre of the book, which acts as a shoreline marking the separation between land and water, to the right-hand page side to encounter the sea.

The effect is reminiscent of one of Lee's earlier books, Mirror (2003), where the fold functioned as a border between reality and illusion.

'It's not as simple as left-hand page or right-hand page for me, though my concepts may be a bit ambitious for children's books,' she admits.

But such ideas could ensure that as the readers grow, the book will grow with them.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on May 18, 2008.