Work samples
About Lee
Lee Nowell-Wilson (b. Easton, MD 1989) is an American figurative artist creating large scale paintings and works on paper. She earned her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011, and currently lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Nowell-Wilson has participated in artist residencies with Elsewhere Studios in Colorado (2021), Stay Home Gallery in Tennessee (2021), the Street Art School in Lyon, France (2015) and… more
In the Grass, With a Baby
In the Grass, With a Baby encompasses painting and drawing as forms to explore the crosshairs of the act of creating, mothering and art history. References to thresholds, time as tapestry, light and gesture have become key vehicles to convey emotion, atmosphere and rhythm within daily domestic life. Thresholds and passageways, time and rhythm, lead us toward revelations on humanity. My process involves taking inspiration from compositions and settings of paintings by master artists such as Vuillard, Manet and Pougny (Puni), with an aim of stepping into conversation with the art historical imagination. In the Grass, With a Baby, specifically draws inspiration from, contends with and plays on Manet’s Luncheon in the Grass and Vuillard’s Self Portrait in the Dressing Room.
Narratively through painting and drawing, I want to point the viewer’s mind towards the idea of our spaces – both exterior and interior – becoming an equal “covering” as they are an “undoing”. They reveal and conceal. They define, sometimes confine, but always refine the form of our characters. Somehow our spaces know our habits, floor boards and grassy paths alike bending to our rhythms, simultaneously witnessing us bend ourselves to walk in new shoes. I am interested in how our spaces cyclically record that humanity, resulting in both an exposure and formation of our inner worlds. This work incorporates elements of nature’s repetitive motif in contrast with domestic patterns in order to emphasis an “inner” and “outer” pull.
Related to this, my work also asks, can the cyclical “plainness” of each day – patterns seen, noises heard, tasks completed – contribute towards letting go of passionate grandeur and gaining a settled simplicity? In an autobiographical sense, In the Grass, With a Baby shares my own wrestling with the mundanity and sanctity within my heart as mother. As I share the floor with my children, starring at the same patterned rug, narrating the same birdsong book, I grapple with this humdrum aspect of familial motion. But can that motion of ceaseless repetition transfer into relatable rhythm, nostalgic in its nature? Can I gain a needed element of reconciliation through the sacrifice of novelty? That sacrifice, the drastic difference between ideal romanticism and realistic life, is portrayed through my references to high standing historical paintings. By weaving my own inner dialogues into Vuillard’s silence-filled interiors, inserting my own dog-days of summer picnics with buffets of pb&j scraps and smashed kids’ fruit into Manet’s luncheon, and substituting my maternal nature for the nude of Manet’s painting, I aim to expose and pierce that sacrifice within mothering. It exposes a needed reconciliation that’s learned only through the monotony of mothering.
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In the Grass, With Tigey
In the Grass, With Tigey, 20” x 24”, wax pastel on newsprint, 2023
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Mes Enfants Sur L'Herbe
Mes Enfants Sur L'Herbe, 14” x 14”, oil on linen, 2022
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Never Just Vague Generalities (Wrestling with Light)
Never Just Vague Generalities (Wrestling with Light), 22” x 30”, wax pastel on paper, 2022
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Lounge
Lounge, 36” x 34”, wax pastel on newsprint, 2023
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Cat, Dog, Bear, Frog
Cat, Dog, Bear, Frog, 40” x 30”, wax pastel on paper, 2023
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Look At Me, Mommy!
Look at Me, Mommy, 60” x 48”, wax pastel on paper, 2023
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What Do I Do With This Mess?
What Do I Do With This Mess?, 72” x 48”, oil on canvas, 2023
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Thumbnails in the Woods
Thumbnails in the Woods, 72” x 48”, oil on canvas, 2023
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Le Dejeuner
Le Dejeuner, 72” x 96”, oil and oil sticks on canvas, 2023
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Don't Cry Over Spilt Milk
My exhibition statement read: Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk is an autobiographical inquiry into the ambivalent undertones felt within birth, domestic labor, and human relationship. Through combining the use of mundane household items and figural configurations that reference historical, religious compositions, Nowell-Wilson unweaves a tension felt between the “plainness” of home-life and the required discipline, sacrifice, and tenacity within care-giving. As each household item starts to create form and become a secondary figure in-and-of-itself, Nowell-Wilson examines a tipping point — the line where the maternalistic state of being tips from something sensitive to aggressive, from a tearing tension to close connection — and she invites her viewer into that vulnerable walk. While also combining high realism, abstract marks, and empty contours, Nowell-Wilson speaks metaphorically to elements of weight, physicality, mental health, and veneration; each piece is made in the effort to humorously cry about the growing pains of having children while also examining it as something holy.
The exhibition presented two new, large-scale drawings from me, along with a floor installation that featured the third issue of MILKED, an independent arts publication created by myself and Darin Michelle Gilliam.
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Mother's Pieta36" x 48" / Charcoal and graphite on Lenox paper / 2021
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Cycles and the Rug and My Eggs48" x 36" / charcoal and graphite on Lenox paper / 2021
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Exhibition & project spaceAn outside view of the exhibition and project space.
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Exhibition viewAn outside, side view of the exhibition and project space.
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Installation viewA view of the two drawings installed in the project space from the outside.
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Installation view 2A view of the installation piece featuring my magazine, MILKED.
Exploring Maternal Ambivalence Through Collaboration
For the execution, Kaylan traveled to Elsewhere Studios Residency in Colorado for a week and I stayed local to my home-studio with my 2 week old baby. However, the project filled a much larger umbrella in the end. The collaborative efforts of our work ignited a conversation that contrasted the "in-home" vs. "out-of-home" creative experience, exposing the realities of mothering and creating art simultaneously. Our daily-kept journals, sometimes written pensively at the day's end and other times jotted on scaps of paper in one-word-forms of expression, built a catalogue of the daily acts of mothering and created a library of mothering-artistry dialogue.
In the end, the project presented the tension, pulling and paradox felt within a mother's mind while reflecting on the equivocal journey of the maternal body itself. We play with elements of abstraction and components of realism in order to explore layers of complex human emotions -- ones that involve both pandemic and non-pandemic related ramifications. Kaylan's paintings are vibrantly layered with pressure, joy, weight and the idea of break boundaries. My drawings utilize classic household toys and festive objects seeped in familial memory to ride the line of comfort vs. strain. I also wanted to explore how activating the space between marks could metaphorically represent the lack of space between mother and child.
The full project included 3 large scale drawings created by me, 3 large scale paintings created by Kaylan, a recorded podcast episode (recorded by Kaylan) and a digital magazine (curated by me and designed by Darin Gilliam). Here on my profile, I have included only my drawings and the cover image of the magazine -- but Kaylan's paintings can be seen at https://www.milkedmagazine.com/pint-special-edition.
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Their Mess, My Mess48" x 36" / Charcoal and graphite on Lenox paper / 2021
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Their Mess, My Mess detailDetail shot of Their Mess, My Mess
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My House, Their House48" x 36" / charcoal and graphite on Lenox paper / 2021
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My House, Their House detailDetail shot of My House, Their House
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My Name, Their Name (Inside and Outside the Picture Plane)48" x 36" / charcoal and graphite on Lenox paper / 2021
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Pint Issue 4A cover image of the digital magazine (called PINT), that I created. This digital magazine features the collaboration as a whole, and can be viewed and downloaded here: https://www.milkedmagazine.com/pint-special-edition
Daily Dialogues
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Daily Dialogue No. 8 (Toy Trucks)12" x 12" / charcoal and akua ink monoprint / 2021
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Daily Dialogue No. 10 (Flipped)12" x 12" / charcoal and akua ink monoprint / 2021
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Daily Dialogue No. 11 (Solo Moment)12" x 12" / charcoal and akua ink monoprint / 2021
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Daily Dialogue No. 12 (In the Sun)12" x 12" / charcoal and akua ink monoprint / 2021
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Daily Dialogue No. 13 (Summer)12" x 12" / charcoal and akua ink monoprint / 2021
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Daily Dialogue No. 15 (Shapes on the Playground)12" x 12" / charcoal and akua ink monoprint / 2021
Full Communion
This series was created between March 2017 - March 2018, culminating in a solo show titled "Full Communion" at Project 1628 in Bolton Hill, Baltimore. Interviewed by Katherine Tzu-Ian Mann and published online on Bmore Art, Nowell-Wilson divuldges the conceptual formation of Full Communion in an article titled "Art, Motherhood, and Full Communion".
With this series, the final goal was to present a new body of work that acted as a processing tool for Nowell-Wilson, but also openly divuldged topics often un-discusses in the art world: relationship, growing pains, weight and movement within the realms of motherhood. Often the "roles" of Artist and Mother are viewed as seperate and combative, and art refrencing motherhood is seen as "mommy art" and hobby oriented. Lee Nowell-Wilson's work is an intentional opposition to that idea, and an exposure of the fact that motherhood does not compromise the quality of an artist's work.
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A Ponderous Wrestle42" x 32" / graphite and charcoal on paper / 2018
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All the Feelings (Or Just All the Laundry?) Part l72" x 32" / graphite and charcoal on paper / 2018
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All the Feelings (Or Just All the Laundry?) Part l (detail)72" x 32" / graphite and charcoal on paper / 2018
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All the Feelings (Or Just All the Laundry?) Part ll72" x 32" / graphite, charcaol and tissue paper on paper / 2018
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All the Feelings (Or Just All the Laundry?) Part ll (detail)72" x 32" / graphite, charcoal and tissue paper on paper / 2018 (DETAIL)
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Three Graces Plus60" x 66" / charcoal on paper / 2018
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Three Graces Plus (detail)60" x 66" / charcoal on paper / 2018 (DETAIL)
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You All Sometimes Me of Take ll18" x 24" / graphite and charcoal on paper / 2018
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You All Sometimes Me of Take lll18" x 24" / graphite and charcoal on paper / 2018
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She Is Me, I Am Her, But She Is Herself48" x 36" / graphite, charcoal and gold leaf on paper / 2017