• About The Studio

    Artist Statement

    (summery)
    My work is grounded in presence — in being here, alive, and attentive. I use art as a space for dialogue about time, place, and the shared myths that shape how we understand the present moment.

    (extended)
    I have worked as an artist throughout my life, with a practice rooted in sustained observation and lived experience. In 2016, I legally changed my name as a way of clarifying the boundary between my private life and my public artistic practice — not to construct an identity, but to protect the conditions that allow the work itself to exist.

    Much of my work is organized under the exhibition title Living Here. This phrase reflects a commitment to presence and persistence at a time when public culture is often shaped by erasure, speed, and disposability. Art requires life — attention, time, and endurance — and my work insists on those conditions. As long as I am alive, my work will continue to focus on the ongoing, ordinary, and resilient fact of life unfolding.

    I am interested in how ancestral knowledge — philosophy, belief systems, and artistic traditions — is carried forward through images and stories. Artists throughout history have captured myths not as fixed truths, but as living frameworks shaped by the circumstances of their time. My work engages with this tradition by responding to contemporary events, popular culture, spiritual traditions, and the visual language of everyday life.

    Influenced by impressionist landscape painting, minimalism, pop culture, and world religions, my work functions as an open dialogue with viewers — an invitation to reflect on time, space, and the myth of the moment we are living through together.

    MFA, Studio Art/Painting, Boston University 2007

    BSIS, Arts Administration/Interior Design, Mississippi State University 2004

    Jean-Marie Lee, Studio specializes in fine art painting and site specific art. I am available to teach foundation and advanced painting, foundation drawing, foundation 2/D design, color theory, site specific/installation art, and gallery management.

    CV available on request