Bio

Lee Nowell-Wilson (b. 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 Colorado (2021), Stay Home Gallery in Tennessee (2021), the Street Art School in Lyon, France (2015) and Creative Paradox in Maryland (2011). In 2019, she founded MILKED, a self published arts journal, and her own work has featured in Dappled Things, “An Artist and A Mother” book, Create! Magazine and Northwest Review. Recently, her work has been exhibited at the Susquehanna Art Museum, IA&A at Hillyer in Washington D.C, Lake Forest College, amongst other galleries, and is part of the permanent collection with the GLB Memorial Fund based in Washington, D.C.

Other notable lectures, reviews and achievements can be seen on her CV below.


Full Statement

Narratively through recent work, I want to point the viewer’s mind towards the idea of our spaces – both exterior and interior – becoming an equal “covering” as they are an “undoing”. They reveal and conceal. They define, sometimes confine, but always refine the form of our characters. Somehow our spaces know our habits, floor boards and grassy paths alike bending to our rhythms, simultaneously witnessing us bend ourselves to walk in new shoes. I am interested in how our spaces cyclically record that humanity, resulting in both an exposure and formation of our inner worlds. This work incorporates elements of nature’s repetitive motif in contrast with domestic patterns in order to emphasis an “inner” and “outer” pull.

Related to this, my work also asks, can the cyclical “plainness” of each day – patterns seen, noises heard, tasks completed – contribute towards letting go of passionate grandeur and gaining a settled simplicity? In an autobiographical sense, In the Grass, With a Baby shares my own wrestling with the mundanity and sanctity within my heart as mother. As I share the floor with my children, starring at the same patterned rug, narrating the same birdsong book, I grapple with this humdrum aspect of familial motion. But can that motion of ceaseless repetition transfer into relatable rhythm, nostalgic in its nature? Can I gain a needed element of reconciliation through the sacrifice of novelty? That sacrifice, the drastic difference between ideal romanticism and realistic life, is portrayed through my references to high standing historical paintings. By weaving my own inner dialogues into Vuillard’s silence-filled interiors, inserting my own dog-days of summer picnics with buffets of pb&j scraps and smashed kids’ fruit into Manet’s luncheon, and substituting my maternal nature for the nude of Manet’s painting, I aim to expose and pierce that sacrifice within mothering. It exposes a needed reconciliation that’s learned only through the monotony of mothering.

CV

EDUCATION 

Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), BFA Painting, May 2011

Studio Art Center International (SACI), Florence, Italy, Fall 2009

RESIDENCIES 

2021 Elsewhere Studios, Paonia, Colorado

2021 Stay Home Residency, Paris, Tennessee

2019 MOTHRA Artist-Parent Residency, Toronto Island, Canada (completed remotely)

2015 Street Art School, Youth With a Mission, Lyon, France

2012 Creative Paradox, Annapolis, MD

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS (*solo or two-person exhibition)

*2023 - In the Grass, With a Baby, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA

*2023 - House Under the Table, IA&A at Hillyer, Washington D.C

2022 Mythologies of Motherhood, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA.

*2021 Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk, Plain Sight, Washington D.C.

2021 Invocations, Women in the Arts x Latela Curatorial at The Silva Gallery, Washington, D.C.

2021 Faces and Figures II, online exhibition, PXP Contemporary

2020 Holding On, online exhibition, Stay Home Gallery, Nashville, TN-based

2020 Rise, IA&A at Hillyer, Washington, D.C.

2020 My Soul Sits Here, online exhibition, Subject Matter Art, London-based

2019 Re:Birth, Spilt Milk Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland

*2019 Where We Find It, Sense Gallery, two person exhibition, Washington, D.C.

*2018 Full Communion, Project 1628, Baltimore, MD

2018 Connected. Tangled. Intimate. Delectable. Hancock Solar Gallery, Baltimore, MD

2016 Upfest Street Art Festival, Bristol, England 

*2015 Au Revoir, Creative Paradox, Annapolis, MD

2013 Jumbo Shrimp, IAM, New York, NY

2013 Appetizer, Creative Paradox, Annapolis, MD

2013 AIR '13 End of Year Show, Creative Paradox, Annapolis, MD

2012 WOMEN: An Exhibition, D Center @ MAP, Baltimore, MD

2012 The 12 x 12, Creative Paradox, Annapolis, MD

PUBLICATIONS / INTERVIEWS / REVIEWS

*FORTHCOMING 2023, An Artist and a Mother, book edited by Tara Carpenter Estrada, Heidi Moller Somsen & Kaylan Buteyn, to be published by Demeter Press

2021 - Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk, reviewed by Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post, (June 27)

2021 Our Rhythm Our Blues, Volume 2: Ladies First, online zine

2020 Art Seen: Painting at Night, An Artist/Mother Podcast Exhibtion, juried by Allison Reimus, review by Robert R. Shane, The Brooklyn Rail, (July-August 2020 Issue)

2020 Stay Home, a publication printed by Stay Home Gallery

2020 Home-Works, a zine printed by Spilt Milk Gallery

2019 Artist/Mother Podcast interview, episode 17

2019 Create Magazine!, Women’s International Issue (March/April)

2018 October Artist of the Month, Both Artist and Mother online blog

2018 “Art, Motherhood, And Full Communion”, Bmore Art, interview by Katherine Mann (March)

2018 Maker’s Magazine, Issue 5: HOME

AWARDS

2019 Maryland State Arts Council Creativity Grant

2019 Semi-Finalist, Bethesda Trawick Prize

2011 Puffin Foundation Grant 

LECTURES + PANELS

2022 - No Unsacred Places, The Collegium Institute, guest panelist

2022 - MOTHER & MILKED, Mason Exhibitions Arlington, guest moderator, discussion orchestrated in conjunction with the exhibition ‘MOTHER’ co-curated by Lily Siegel, Don Russell and Laurel Nakadate

2022 - Guest juror with accompanying Artist Talk, Delaplaine Art Center, Frederick, MD

2019 PDSS: Artist in Early Parenthood: How Your Life is Shaped by External Forces, Hamiltonian Artists, guest panelist alongside Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Chelsea Ragan and Ty Williams, Washington, D.C

2019 Guest Critic, One School and Youth With a Mission, Baltimore, MD

2018 CRUX Artist Panel, host for panel with Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, James Williams and Caleb Kortokrax, Projet 1628, Baltimore, MD

2018 Guest Lecturer for professional practices, One School and Youth With a Mission, Baltimore, MD

2017 Guest Artist, Inspiracio visiting art residency program from Barcelona, Youth With a Mission, Baltimore, MD