Deanna Lee
Land scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW through aesthetic means , to spend more time with the work , which may allow ideas in the work to be communicated . For me , the best art conveys two essential values — aesthetic pleasure and conceptual significance — equally , but most art leans to varying degrees toward one value or the other . Your approach is very personal , and your technique condenses a variety of viewpoints that you combine together into a coherent balance . We suggest to our readers to visit http :// www . deannaclee . net in order to get a more comprehensive view of Lee ’ s work .) Would you tell us something about the evolution of your style and process ? Also , are your works produced gesturally and instinctively ? Or do you methodically transpose schemes ?
Although I had some training in figure drawing and Western representational styles in school , I have always been , foremost , a maker of abstract images and inspired by physical matter . When I began making art in a serious way , I was enamored with experimenting with painting materials and process — involving lots of spills , drips , and pours — and letting those elements determine the work . But I grew bored and distrustful of the perceived freedom and authenticity of gestural abstraction . At roughly the same time , I learned the early
Renaissance egg-tempera technique , which demanded a welcome slowing of my process , and I was briefly employed as a painting assistant for a decorative ceramicist ; both of these experiences taught me to be more deliberate in approach . My art from 2001 to 2006 was mainly conceptually driven , in terms of adopting a style that suited a given idea , and employed appropriated imagery in multiples . For example , one early solo exhibition featured two works : a group of fifty photo-based , postcard-size , quasiphotorealistic paintings of landscapes , and a sculptural floor installation comprising a few thousand three-inchtall plaster casts of a cartoon figurine , each one painted with a unique and colorful pattern . Then , I decided to appropriate the practice of pedagogical copying in traditional Chinese art , and I made a number of works that reinterpreted masterworks of Chinese painting . I also began to copy and reconfigure imagery from Japanese woodblock prints and Chinese decorative art . These works led me to develop a more personal way to draw that I felt more accurately expressed my relationship to these antique models : that of a contemporary Chinese-American female artist who was looking to male artists from several hundred to a thousand years ago ( or more ) for