ARTIST STATEMENT
I paint because I love it and hope to share this joy with others. When painting I'm brought back to simplicities, back to my senses, and in a way, back to life. On the good days painting becomes a meditation that moves between exhilarating, challenging, and peaceful. To surrender my scripted plans and just listen and look, not knowing what will come, is a trust-fall of sorts and an act of devotion. Painting’s mix of uncertainty, sheer joy, some humbled groveling, satisfaction, awe, and trancelike motion dissolves the excess in my psyche and leaves me clearer in mind and heart.
And so the simple act of painting brings transformation and renewal. I believe this can translate to others through a finished work. In a time filled with so much that can leave us far from the subtle pulse of a day, acts of simplification – for me, painting – seem like time well spent. My hope is that by listening when something luminous calls, by partaking in the alchemy of painting and surrendering to an unknowable outcome, something inspiring will develop on the canvas and eventually touch someone else's heart.
ABOUT THE WORK
My paintings are made from life and on-location, using tubes of paint, big brushes, pallet knives, and occasionally bare hands and even dirt. Most often my car's trunk is my easel, allowing me the satisfaction of the outdoors while protecting paintings from the blustery wind of Northern NM. Where once I painted highly representational work with little impasto, over the last several years my paintings have grown increasingly heavy with paint and liberal in their response to reality. The challenge has been pushing the lines between abstract and representational, between paint as a substance, as a creator of image, and as a catalyst for emotional response. In so far as a painting dances along these lines while remaining luminous, surprising, and directly informed by rigors inherent in any composition, I find a measure of success and satisfaction.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2011 | Recent Paintings by Jivan Gabriel Lee; Milagro Gallery; Taos, NM
2006 | Selected Photography; Toscanini’s; Cambridge, MA
2005 | Jivan Lee: Untitled; Campus Center Gallery, Bard College; Annandale, NY
2004 | Jivan Lee: Recent Work; Campus Center Gallery, Bard College; Annandale, NY
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2011 | “Taos Select,” Taos Fall Arts Festival juried show; Taos, NM
2011 | “Land and Light,” Plein Air Painters NM juried show; Millicent Rogers Museum; Taos, NM
2011 | "A Russian Night in Taos;" Taos Art Museum and Fechin House; Taos, NM
2011 | “The NOW WOW Project” national juried exhibition; Hudson Gallery; Sylvania, OH
2010 | “Portraits of the Sacred”; Stables Gallery; Taos, NM
2009 | Shandaken Artists Studio Tour; Chichester, NY
