2014

Photo Album

I create works that examine how memories are constructed and recalled. Snapshots of gatherings, celebrations, and other notable moments are translated into detailed line drawings and then overlaid to create semi-abstract compositions. These new images display a somewhat mysterious yet subtlety familiar space that holds a collision of diluted symbolism and traces of nostalgia. The source photographs are the results of our attempts to record an experience. They create a catalyst for recall.

However, the recollection in our mind is unique. By layering multiple images, I represent the phases I believe are used to develop these memories: the perception manufactured from expectation, the details recorded from experience, and the incompletely distinct recollection. The integrated result that becomes our memory is influenced and over written by different bits of information created from each of these steps. My works leverage this internal process by using visual insinuation to simultaneously present the individually meaningful moment and the universally shared familiar experience.

Lee Gainer is a visual artist who creates meticulous works that examine how memories are constructed and recalled. She is presently a resident in the competitive residency program at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, Virginia. Her work has been exhibited nationally including solo exhibits at the Arlington Arts Center, GRACE in Reston, Virginia, and Hillyer Art Space in Washington, D.C. Lee’s work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Fresh Paint, and YVI Magazine. Her works are part of the collections of the Washington D.C. Art Bank, the Rosslyn Renaissance Business Improvement District, the Indie Photobook Library, and The Newark Public Library, Special Collections Division. Online, her work has been presented at DailyServing, Humble Arts Foundation, Murmur DC, The Truth of Beauty, Today and Tomorrow, i like this art, Beautiful Decay, DesignBoom, and many others. She is a semi-finalist for the 2014 and 2013 Bethesda Painting Awards, a 2012 Trawick Prize semi-finalist, and a recipient of a Creative Communities Fund Grant for her work with the 2011 Source Festival. She attended VCU on scholarship and received a BFA, Cum Laude. Lee also curates a blog, Peek (www.leegainer.blogspot.com), which has presented a new contemporary artist each weekday since February 2008.