Leezee Lee

Artistic background

Drawing inspiration from everything surrounding me. My medium of choice is oil and acrylic but I work regularly with graphite, watercolours, inks, pastels (soft and oil) and occasionally coloured pencils. paint, draw or sketch everyday with rare exceptions and I learn something new with every brush stroke. My work is quite diverse as I am a rather curious person and tend to experiment a lot; However, I've always been captivated by expressionist, semi-abstract figurative art and most of my work reflects this. I'm drawn to unique shapes, unusual subjects, odd angles and interesting perspectives. I have a preference for forceful expressive brush strokes, bold palette knife applications (impasto) and painterly marks paired with a limited colour palette that captivate the eye. I find beauty in almost anything, especially that which is not seen as traditionally beautiful, that which stands against the norms. Hence, I'm fascinated with gloomy, haunting, unsettling scenes that elicit a sense of melancholy and despondency. In consequence, my paintings have been criticized by some on account of bleakness which has influenced me to create brighter paintings occasionally.

I am vastly self taught, although I've had a few artist friends around who've made the learning journey a lot easier. I have no formal artistic education, my academic background being in psychology. I hold a master's degree in Forensic Psychology and I've been working in Mental Health since 2016, this being the reason why some of my works bear psychological themes. My favorite paintings would be at the border between reality and magic with strange characters, eerie, mysterious atmosphere and surrealist elements. I'm most fulfilled when I've managed to paint uncertainty, doubt and mystery whilst maintaining a simple composition and a single focal point. I use paint to express that which words fail to, the ineffable.