Solo Exhibition | Scottsdale, AZ
Altamira Fine Art Scottsdale is pleased to present Tributary, a solo exhibition for New Mexico artist Jivan Lee. Please join us Thursday, January 17th during the Gold Palette ArtWalk, for an Artist Reception from 6:30-9pm. The artist will be in attendance.
Painting, for Jivan Lee, is an ongoing dialogue with mystery. Immersing himself in his Taos surrounds, he paints in pursuit of beauty as it unfolds in myriad forms from nature’s seasons to suburban nightscapes and interior scenes. Lee courts wildness – in his finished works, in his subjects, and while painting on location. For him, painting traces a precipice of uncertainty. He considers asking himself, “Is this really working?” to be a good sign—evidence that the wild flux he finds so inspiring in nature is coming alive on canvas. This embrace of flow is a shift in his creative process, a turn away from technical rigidity toward fluidity, an evolution akin to the feeling of surfing or snowboarding or powder skiing.
Like such athletic practices, painting defies complete control: “We may have a general trajectory, but ultimately the path to any goal is a mystery until we’ve walked it,” Lee says. Only by embracing the verb of painting can the noun be achieved. And the act of exhibiting his work completes the creative process: the communion, of sorts, shared in the presence of something vital. He feels satisfied when people respond to the pulse of his work. “I want people to see my paintings and experience some excitement, some pause, some quiet and some joy,” he says. “I want the work to land meaningfully, and maybe speak with the voice of nature in a broad sense of the word: the wild, land and weather, light; the elemental; the mysterious and the uncontrollable.”
Pre-sales available.
Call (480) 949-1256 or email az@altamiraart.com for more details.
Artist Biography
Jivan Lee is an oil painter based in Taos, NM. He grew up in Woodstock, NY and studied painting at Bard College. His work explores the nature of paint as raw material, creator of image, and catalyst for emotional response, and is increasingly addressing the complexities of how humans see and shape their environment.
His paintings are rhythmic, colorful, textural responses to the Western landscape in its many forms, from untrammeled wild lands to urban machinery to iconic chapels. They’ve been exhibited nationally at museums and educational institutions and covered in publications such as Fine Art Connoisseur, Southwest Art, Western Art Collector, Art Business News, and Plein Air Magazine among others. In addition to painting as much as time allows, Jivan occasionally teaches and continues work with his Project for Art and the Environment.
Jivan was named an artist to watch by Fine Art Connoisseur in February 2016 and his work was featured on the cover of Southwest Art Magazine’s February 2015 annual landscape issue. Phoenix Home and Garden Magazine published a six-page feature on his work and process, “A Respect for the Land,” in December 2016. Selected recent exhibitions include the 2017 and 2018 Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale in Denver, CO, where Jivan won the Fine Art Connoisseur award for excellence two years in a row, and New Regionalisms: Contemporary Art in the Western States, an exhibit curated by art critic Michael Paglia at the McNichols Building in Denver. Jivan’s paintings are in corporate and private collections nationally and internationally.
