Deanna Lee
Land scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW in particular, how do your Chinese and Taiwanese roots inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general— that is, the importance of beauty in artistic production?
Thanks very much for your interest in my work and the concepts and influences behind it. Prior to my decision to focus on making visual art, I received fifteen years of classical training on several musical instruments; over time, I have come to realize the profound effect of this experience on my art and life. Growing up within a medical-science family has been another strong influence. During my years at Oberlin, I studied both art history and fine art; the liberal-arts curriculum encouraged an eclectic and inclusive path to learning and building a conceptual and practical toolkit. I was able to explore my interest in Classical antiquity and archaeology during the half year that I spent in Rome, and that was when I first had a studio of my own( a little corner of a passageway, really) and thought of myself as an artist. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I came to define my focus as a painter. I knew some of the Hairy Who and Imagist artists, but the influence of these groups on my work emerged later; at the time, I was more interested in abstract painting of the New York School.
Although I am an American-born Chinese woman, I didn’ t grow up with the languages of my parents( Mandarin, Cantonese, or Taiwanese) or Chinese traditions. I began to consider my ethnic background as a possible element in my work only after taking a couple of courses on traditional Chinese paintings in college and graduate school and then working in the department of Asian art in the AIC museum, which offered me an intimate, hands-on relationship with a wide-ranging collection of venerable objects. I remain inspired by traditional Chinese and Japanese painting— both the austere, calligraphy-based literati styles and the decorative, highly detailed academic styles that served imperial patrons. Perhaps my background led me to embrace certain aesthetic traditions that are less familiar to viewers accustomed to Western art history, but I approach Asian art as a foreigner. I have heard of but never practiced traditional Asian art-making methods. I think of my accumulative drawing approach as a tenuous analogy to certain artistic traditions— as a method that conveys an inherently distanced relationship. Although I know of the practices and