Lee Nowell-Wilson
House Under the Table
Saturday, February 4–Sunday, February 26, 2023

House Under the Table is a new body of work that illustrates a wrestling between the commonplace and the divine in the arena of one’s soul. With mothering as the lens, I examine my tendency to resent the mundane, along with the needed reconciliation I gain through the sacrifice of novelty. As I feel relegated to the floor as a parent to play house, pour fake tea and climb under tables repeatedly, it highlights my inability to truly sit. I question, why am I dismissive of this boredom?

The pieces of this exhibition employ an exaggeration of light and pattern to heighten the urgency of this question. In contrast to past work, I introduce an element of interior space, nostalgia and a use of paint to document the slow caricature of time. In the end, House Under the Table is my first exposure of an unreconciled heart expecting fulfillment from the wrong metaphorical laundry basket, mistaking material as debris and finding it again in the slow, monotony of mothering.

About the artist:

Lee Nowell-Wilson (b. Easton, MD 1989) is an American figurative artist creating large scale paintings and works on paper. She earned her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011, and currently lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Nowell-Wilson has participated in artist residencies with Elsewhere Studios in Paonia, CO, Stay Home Gallery in Paris, TN, Creative Paradox in Annapolis, MD, and the Street Art School in Lyon, France. In 2019, she founded MILKED, an arts publication, and within the last year her own work has featured in the Northwest Review, Our Rhythms Our Blues online zine, and Stay Home Gallery’s first publication. In 2021, her work was exhibited with Latela Curatorial and Plain Sight Gallery in Washington, D.C, and reviewed in The Washington Post. to learn more about the artist, visit her website.