"Palos Verdes Peninsula Artists"
by Stephen Smoke
Artist Profile: Gloria D. Lee (excerpt from book)
by Stephen Smoke
Walking into Gloria Lee's home is like walking into the mind of the artist. The visitor is immersed in a terrain that is truly the landscape of the painter's soul. Her paintings are like postcards commemorating the various stages in the journey of a serious and talented artist.
The Manhattan Beach resident describes her current work as "intuitive, but not necessarily surreal as most other artists describe that term. "My work is more non-objective and expressionistic, more like a world I see inside."
Lee likes to work in her San Pedro, California, studio that she shares with two other artists, Pat Woolley and Carol Morris-Ward. She starts a painting differently every time. Sometimes she will draw first with her eyes closed, and then take a look at what's there. Famous Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, she says, influenced this part of her artistic process. "Sometimes I'll take charcoal, or a pen, or a pencil and close my eyes. Then I'll feel the edges of the paper and start drawing shapes, kind of a meandering type of thing. Then when I can't think of anything else to draw in terms of shapes, I'll open my eyes and look at what I have and work from that. I find that experience very freeing. This way I don't have to think about what it's supposed to look like. It opens things up for me to imagine what it can be become. What the painting is supposed to look like depends on whoever's looking at it."
Over the past 10 or 15 years Lee's work has become much more abstract, surrealistic, or a combination of both. She wants people who view her work to see what it is they want to see or whatever it's become for them. "Sometimes I may have a statement I'm trying to make with the work – something political or social." But if anyone asks her what her paintings mean, she just tells them that it means what it means to them.
Lee did not start her artistic life as a painter. In fact, she was more focused on theater and singing. Her musically talented mother played violin, and her grandmother played the organ and sang, while her grandfather's family played musical instruments and sang. Her father's relatives were artists, too. While looking into her family's genealogy, she got in touch with distant relatives and discovered that many of them were artists and craftsmen.
Lee began painting about 30 years ago and it's been a long journey since her early work. Up until 1988, she painted flowers, landscapes, portraits, and still lifes – all objective types of art. During this period she was a dedicated teacher, teaching mainly academic subjects such as English, History, and Algebra. "I was using my left brain as a teacher, but I wanted to use my right brain; I wanted to be more creative. I don't want to be so left-brain now. It's too hard to switch over. I want to be on the right side, the creative side. If I'm irritable I become much happier when I'm working on the right side."
She includes John Singer Sergeant, Winslow Homer, Sergei Bongart, Joseph Mangnani, Elizabeth J. Cox, and Picasso as her early influences. In the beginning, she desired to paint only portraits. From there, she moved gradually to mixed media. Painting in watermedia/mixed media and collaging with papers and found objects provides her the opportunity to build upon a surface, to reorganize a work from "chaos to order."
In 1987 -1988 Lee became more interested in looking inward and started asking herself questions like, "Who am I?" and "Where am I going?"
Thus, her more recent work reflects the journey she has taken in life. "What happens on the way is more interesting than getting there," she says. "My creative process these days involves having an idea, then intuitively following my feelings, and a different emotional journey will inevitably take me to the creative destination. Color plays an important part in creating a new world from the old one. Some colors and shapes may suggest a new direction as I try to interpret what I see. All art comes from inside, and I'm inspired by the possibilities in the journey's destination."
Lee is as introspective as her work might indicate. "Sometimes I wonder if art is created because things aren't perfect in people's life. There are problems and hurdles we all have to overcome in order to grow and mature. That's just all a part of the process, the journey we have to take. Some people choose to write; some choose to paint. I believe that many of us have to write or have to paint. We really have no choice if we are to remain whole."
Lee is a master of mixed media, using layers, collage, monoprint, watercolors, and pastels. "Although I am primarily a watercolorist, printmaking is exciting because there is always an element of surprise as well as freedom to try new ideas. Often I take these ideas and rework them in watercolor, exploring different paper surfaces and techniques. Abstract or nonobjective expression of inner visions and the creative process continue to intrigue me because they lead me onward into the unknown."
Lee teaches five art classes a week, including drawing and pastels at the Palos Verdes Art Center. She is a founding member of the Artist Studio Gallery at the Palos Verdes Art Center and remained active there for 13 years.
Every May, Lee travels to Manzanar to paint with Henry Fukahara. "I paint what I see there, but it's really more my interpretation of what I see."
The artist is a member of the Women Artists of the West, Women Painters West, and Paletteers. Lee has also served as president of South Bay Watercolor Society for eight years. Recent shows include the Women Artist of the West's International Juried Exhibition and Membership Show, Long Beach Art Juried Membership Show, Watercolor West XXIV Juried Transparent Watercolor Show, La Habra Fall Juried Exhibit, Pacific Art Guild Juried Exhibition, Anne Saunders Gallery, and Palos Verdes Art Center's Juried Membership Shows. A graduate of the University of Iowa, Lee has studied at California State University, California State University of Long Beach, Otis Art Institute, the University of California and numerous masters' workshops. In addition to teaching drawing and pastel at the Palos Verdes Art Center, Lee teaches oil painting, watercolor, and printmaking at the Westchester-Emerson Adult School, a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Her work is a part of the UCLA Medical Center Collections and her biography is found in Marquis "Who's Who of American Women."
Gloria D. Lee resides in Manhattan Beach, California and has a studio in San Pedro.
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