By Richard Lee, artist statement:

In August 2006 I traveled from Australia to China to do consecutive residencies in Beijing with Red Gate Gallery and Imagine Gallery. I came to China because I am particularly interested in both contemporary and traditional Chinese art that is concerned with Taoist thought. As I am not Chinese, I cannot presume to really understand the subtleties and complexities of Lao Tzu - I merely feel an affinity with the premise that all 'parts' of the world are generated from one essential nature and thus share an equality of existence.

As an infant I was in remote North Western Australia and grew up in rural Eastern Australia. Whilst I left the country a long time ago and have since lived in larger cities, I have retained a strong feeling for connecting with nature. And so it is this, somewhat romantic, perspective that I bring to a contemporary documentation of urban life.

Painting enables me to contemplate my environment, including organic and constructed forms as well as cultural situations all together as one natural (visual) phenomenon. I observe relationships of both harmony and conflict within the immediate environment and attempt to give a sense of the integration of these elements as part of one unit within my paintings.

My painting technique explores the potential of oil paint for both chaos and control. I see the mingling of chaotic and structural paintwork as a representation of the human mind integrated within the natural world. Chinese ink painting has also influenced my approach to oil painting.

I feel that my work is in some ways a contemporary link to the romantic landscape painters such as Casper David Friedrich or William Turner, for whom nature was a sublime entity. In my own paintings, humans and the man made environment share status with other elements of nature. More recent artists who play with a kind of dark irony - placing human action and desires within a natural context   such as Eric Fischl and Pop artist Richard Hamilton are also of interest to me.

 

contact: e: studiosputnik@hotmail.com