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Michele D. Lee Biography
Michele D. Lee has been exploring the interaction between figuration and
abstraction in painting since the beginnings of her career. She
experienced a turning point in her art when Joe Blaustein, an art
instructor in Los Angeles,
introduced Lee to the work of the Bay Area artists ranging from Manuel
Neri to David Park. While in the years since, Lee has explored different
ends of the spectrum of possibility in painting, from figuration to
abstraction, her sense that painting can host an interaction of these two
impulses derives from her introduction to the Bay Area painters of the
1960s and 70s.
In recent years, Lee
has moved several times, living in California,
Colorado, Chicago,
Philadelphia, New
Jersey and most recently to Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
While living in New Jersey, Lee had a
panoramic view of the Hudson River which
she credits the span and scope of such a view, daily considered and
contemplated, in all its permutations of light and meteorology, with
introducing a tendency toward verticality in her current body of work.
The long “scroll paintings,” as Lee refers to them, exploit
the openness of horizons to allow the intuition of figural suggestions in
soothing and resolving vistas of painterly abstraction.
Not only the physical
apprehension of the climate of the New York area, but also the proximity
to the cultural climate of the New York art scene further encouraged the
direction of Lee’s most recent work. Being so close to the New York scene
released Lee to instill more intense painterliness in her newer work. A
long-term fascination with the human figure has also recently reemerged,
though the figural elements emerge and vanish as a mirage in broad areas
of pure abstraction.
Michele Lee is
currently represented by Stellers Gallery in Ponte
Vedra, Florida, Chao Gallery
and Frame Shop, Jacksonville Beach
Florida. Both currently
have her work on exhibition. Ms. Lee has also had one-person exhibitions
at the Tabor Center, Denver, Colorado, Lovell & Co Gallery, Los Angeles, California
and Serengeti Plain Gallery, Montclair,
New Jersey. Her figurative
work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions including shows at the
Tilford Art Group, Los Angeles, California, Spiller Vincenty Gallery, Jacksonville, Florida,The
Artist Group, Santa Monica, California, and the 2003, 2004 and 2005 National
Black Fine Art Show, SoHo,
New York City. Recently,
her work was selected for a juried exhibition held by the St. Augustine
Art Association show “The Cutting Edge”. Ms. Lee work has
been on exhibition for the Jacksonville Art Walk March 2004, Jacksonville
Beach Art Walk, May 2004 and participated in the Art & Soul Show in Jacksonville, Florida,
October 2004, an art exhibit where partial proceeds from the sale of the
artist work will benefit the Jacksonville Women’s Center.
Ms. Lee has done
numerous commissioned figurative abstract paintings for both commercial
and residential.
Michele D. Lee
attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, Santa Monica
College, the University of California
at Los Angeles evening arts program, and
has received private instruction from Joe Blaustein, Topanga, California.
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