As a painter who has focused on painting the light in interior spaces, still life painting has been a way to bring a range of interesting colors into my studio. The objects in the work are chosen due to their color and shape (I find them visually interesting and potentially poetic). Technicolor objects that have acquired a patina, or have a particular matte quality, I find beautiful. The translucency of wax candles, the color temperature shifts in cardboard, or the hidden hues seen along the edges of a closed book, are visually exciting to me. I compose the objects by playing around with them in a given space like a tabletop. As I work my way through the making of the painting, I continue to discover color moments in various passages, and I strive to express these moments while uniting the painting as a whole. It is my hope that the viewer can follow along with my excitement while studying the painting.
John Lee, Cubist Sunflower (Elvis is Atlas) , 2016, Oil on linen, 28 × 36 in, 71.1 × 91.4 cm. View on Artsy
“Cubist Sunflower” was created as a way to make my version of a flower painting. Instead of a vase of flowers, I used a variety of yellow objects to create a cubist sculpture of a sunflower. I love the mystery of the color yellow, especially deeper warmer yellows. I had found these yellows here in objects such as a Kodak box, the side mirror of a car, a paperback, and an enameled dinner plate, which became the petals of the sunflower. A roll of black masking tape (the “black” itself seen as a color) serves as the capitulum. Propping up the tape is a coffee mug that features the crouching form of a Vegas-era Elvis Presley. The Elvis/Atlas figure, propping up the “planetary” roll of tape, transforms the tabletop into a stage, and the flower into a Broadway-scaled theatrical backdrop.
John Lee, No-Zone Layer, 2016, Oil on linen, 30 × 40 in, 76.2 × 101.6 cm
“No-Zone Layer” is my attempt to create a still life painting that exists in two dimensions. I think of still life paintings as mini-landscapes that contain a foreground, middle ground, and background. I arranged all of the forms on a high shelf top, stacking them one on top of another at eye-level so as to eliminate a sense of spatial depth. The stacking of the objects eliminates both the identity of each form, as well as the spaces between them. The objects become pattern. This visual confusion is heightened by the use of objects that are decorated with pattern, such as record labels (Creedence Clearwater Revival and 45’s from the 1960s). It is my desire to integrate not only the objects and the patterns, but also the colors: electric colors (as in the rubik’s cube and neon pink flashlight) that hopefully work alongside muted colors (as in the dusty books and earthy bricks).
John Lee, Hello Yellow Moon Landing, 2015, Oil on linen, 34 × 42 in, 86.4 × 106.7 cm
“Hello Yellow Moon Landing” weaves together two personality traits: the stoic and the neurotic (emotional). The vintage radio player sits firmly in a middle-ground space and accordingly acquires an architectural gravitas like that of an ancient temple. In contrast are the numerous curving forms that leap and lunge across the planes of the tabletop and wall. An atmosphere is created that reminded me of a moon landing; the radio becomes a lunar lander that juxtaposes the haziness of the deeper space on the table, which is punctuated by the off-white drawing eraser that has a soapy, porous, moon-like color. Contributing to the sense of atmosphere is a poster of a cloud painting by Georgia O’Keeffe (rotated), and a marble doorknob that is poised at “waxing gibbous”.
John Lee, Rubik's Wedge, 2015, Oil on linen, 34 × 42 in, 86.4 × 106.7 cm
“Rubik’s Wedge” is a still life painting that is dominated by a parent couple consisting of a stuffed black chicken and a mannequin head. These figures pose somewhat formally, somewhat oblivious to the play of angles and curves that surround them. For me, the painting is primarily an engagement with the myriad fleshy colors observed in the various passages: the color in the feathers, the head, the lemon (plastic), the handle and head of the rubber mallet, and the shadow planes that sit between the forms.
The title “Rubik’s Wedge” has to do with the space the painting sits in. For me, a painting is like a Rubik’s Cube in that it has depths of space that run top-to-bottom, side-to-side, and front-to-back. The painting is fairly frontal, but not completely so. The viewpoint of the painting sits between two views (frontal and side views), and so is wedged between these differing spaces.