Lee Youngbin creates delicate and pure imagery with watercolor and Korean ink on paper mounted on panel. She uses the traditional Korean materials. In the series that depicts public bathhouses, which she has worked since 2002, the delicate details of each tiles and figures are seen in the composition of the bird’s eye’s view. These figures, who are bathing and washing their bodies, are small, and are depicted as natural, naked, and equal existence away from socially defined roles. This suggests that the artist produces these works with complete honesty, facing her inner self, as well as inviting the viewer to feel in the same way. What she experiences, observes, and reflects seems to be inscribed in each delicate line of the tiles in the bathhouse, as if each line is the artist’s confession. In her solo exhibition at Hakgojae Gallery in 2011, she exhibited 158 pieces of drawings with the motifs of naked bodies, conveying her truthful emotions of the moments. 

Lee also works with the concept of “Ying” (shadows, darkness, negativity). It refers to the ideas that “summer comes when one survives winter”, or “because of death, birth is possible”. With the motifs such as withered flowers, she describes the importance of finding hope and beauty in the negativity. The fragility, or the sense of loneliness of her work is closely connected to the strength.