About Lee
Baltimore City
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
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Full Communion
"Full Communion" is a series of drawings ranging from 18" x 24" to 6.5' x 6' that explore the wrestling interaction of human relationship, specifically through the lens of the artist becoming a mother. Through tightly rendered figures, each drawing conceptually exposes our tendencies to mask our humanity behind the neatly tied, well-packaged, perfectly presented "self". While exploring the nature of becoming a mother, with the reality that one emotion commonly sits openly, vulnerably and directly next to its opposite, abstracted form and deconstructed line become a predominate element within each drawing. This abstraction of form (new to Nowell-Wilson's work), acts as a developing library of vocabulary, a means of recording layered and complicated emotion that are often times inexplicable.
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.
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
Individuals Abroad
Individuals Abroad is a series indoor and outdoor murals painted over a span of a year and a half as the artist lived and moved across 4 different countries, using the same 4 colors of house paint in each country. Each piece divulges the artist's observations of relational concepts within each culture. The portraits ask the series of questions: from what perspective do we view one another, how do we listen to each other, and how do we respond?