Deanna Lee
Land scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW wood-grain pattern of its support panel. I begin by tracing the grain of the panel, I coat the panel with an opaque field of paint, and then I transfer the grain pattern back onto the panel. Throughout the painting process, the visual information of the grain pattern is one element in a set of relationships among color, shape, scale, value, and rhythm, which are all intuitively determined. The final image may have been altered substantially from the original source or not much at all; my goal is to make a good painting from the ingredients that I’ ve somewhat randomly put together. Reliable sources of inspiration are nature subjects, sometimes at a microscopic or macroscopic scale but not always. Trees, water, and clouds are endlessly intriguing to me.
As you remarked once, your work addresses the subjective experience of forms made by natural forces: your images seem to be defined by your sense for abstract, intangible qualities, and we find your ability to provide them with an almost tactile character really captivating. How do you view the concepts of the real and the imagined playing out within your works? In particular, is it important for you that the viewers attempt to recognize traces of reality and the previous life of the materials you combine?
I perceive analogies between natural forms and psychological states, and in my work I strive to delineate the emotional resonance that I see in forms created by natural forces. While my work draws upon on my imagination, I think it also employs a more indexical and analytical approach, of taking existing visual information and manipulating it in order to understand its significance, for myself if for no one else. I think that a work has greater meaning if the viewer does recognize the seeds of the work’ s development, to any degree, but my work ultimately concerns processes of transformation and can be successful if it conveys an aesthetic experience that is independent of its history or genealogy.
Your approach is hallmarked by a hybrid combination between abstraction and explicit reminders of everyday life: as you have remarked in your artist ' s statement, you use tracings and rubbings of surfaces to record the residue of growth, change, and decay in ceilings, walls, and floors. This aspect of your approach reminds us of ideas attributed to Thomas Demand, that art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium. While conceiving that art