Yoli wants you to stop, look and fall in love with the world around you 

There's a particular kind of feeling that only comes when you're moving slowly. Not when you're rushing to catch a bus or scrolling through something on your phone, but when you're on a lovely, unhurried walk – maybe you've got binoculars around your neck, and your eyes are scanning the hedgerows. This is where Yoli begins every piece of work she makes, and it shows.

Based on Jeju Island, the volcanic land off the southern tip of South Korea, the artist has built a practice entirely around observing the natural world. She paints and writes short notes – that's always been her process, she says – and from those two habits, something rather beautiful has grown.

Originally from a city near Seoul, Yoli has lived on Jeju for about a year now, drawn to its lava fields, forested craters and the hundreds of volcanic cones called oreum, scattered around the island. Living there has brought her closer to the environment, a closeness that has seeped into every corner of her work. "I've been able to live much closer to nature," she says. This becomes clear in Wild, where two honey-brown cows move through rolling green hills, the grass rendered in loose, confident strokes. Or the deep midnight blue of Walk at Night, scattered with golden stars that glow like lanterns.

There's a generosity to her palette; the greens feel alive, and the blues seem to breathe. And yet nothing is fussy or overdone. The forms are simple, almost childlike in the best possible way – the kind of images that feel restful to look at, like a long and deep exhale while lying in some comfy, tall grass.

Her Nature Collection series, one of her recent favourites, takes a different approach. There's a grid of birds painted within the miniature frame of a commemorative stamp, each one paired with a short note about the encounter. It's an archive of four years of birdwatching, compressed into something you could hold in your hand. "This process was a precious time for me to truly get to know nature," she says, "which makes this series very meaningful to me." The tenderness of the framing, coupled with a stamp – the smallest official record of something – feels exactly right. Then there's Witse Oreum, a painting inspired by one of Jeju's most-loved hiking trails, where tiny figures make their way across a green hillside, dwarfed by the landscape and absorbed in it. "I find it fascinating to observe people spending peaceful moments in the great outdoors."

In 2023, she published her illustrated essay Collecting Green and, since then, has released two independent series, Birdwatching and Slow Walk, both self-published. There's something fitting about an artist whose whole practice is about resisting speed, putting her work into the world on her own terms. But overall, what she wants from her audience is curiosity. "I hope they feel inspired to walk in their local park, watch the birds, observe small insects and notice the new sprouts coming up in the spring." It's a modest ask, really, but then the things she's pointing us towards are modest too. And that's the point.