ROBERT   AVON   LEES

ARTIST STATEMENT

His compositions have an organic presence and aliveness.  Lees states, “forms and colors gain meaning as they relate to our inner selves.  Used separately or in relationships, colors and forms are metaphorical means of expressing different emotions, movements, and qualities of life.”

Lees creates a dynamic, highly charged surface by building up as many as 30 layers of paint using “chance” and allowing “accidents” to happen along the way.  His challenge in painting is to “create a pure intuitive dialogue emotionally and intellectually using deep insights.”

Robert Avon Lees is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes Architecture, Landscape Architecture, painting and mixed media sculpture.  His focus is on integrating fine art, design and architecture.  He works intuitively, creating in an improvisational manner with his materials.

As a child, growing up in Minneapolis, MN, Lees was exposed to modern art at the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.  Major exhibits of Kandinsky and other abstract painters made a deep impression on him.

Lees’ paintings are spontaneous, colorful, yet deep, abstract expressions reflecting his interest in the merging of contemporary scientific theories with mystical and metaphysical views.  His content expresses his vision of space, cellular matter, energy, transformation and other dimensions.

Robert Avon Lees earned a BLA (Bachelor of Landscape Architecture) from the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Minnesota.  During his 6 years of studies he was influenced by the Bauhaus: the philosophy of combining fine and applied arts in cooperative projects.

After college, he worked as a designer/builder from concept through final construction on his own architecture and landscape projects.  His work has involved solar energy, earth sheltered and unique architectural homes and gardens combining art and architecture.  The process of working in Architecture and landscape has formed impressions about the environment and its relationships that make their way back into his paintings

Lees has painted since childhood and exhibited his paintings and sculpture nationally in museums and galleries since 1986.  His work was included at Berkeley Art Center’s national exhibit in 1987.  Lees received the Park Shore Gallery Award in Naples, FL in l990.  Other CA exhibits include the San Diego Museum of Art and the San Diego Art Institute.  More recently, Lees work has been shown in Portland, OR, Minneapolis, MN, Telluride and Mountain Village, CO and Santa Fe, NM.

Robert Avon Lees has won awards in a number of public art competitions nationally.  Lees’ site-specific sculpture was selected as first runner up for the $100,000 San Diego Harbor Island Sculpture Competition.  His designs also won awards for WSU Veterans Memorial Sculpture (Pullman, WA) and the Escondido, CA Transit Center. 

In Loving Memory....

Robert Avon Lees passed away on July 2nd, 2017. As an artist and free spirit, a creator at heart, his artwork and architectural builds will continue to remind us how special it was the way Robert Avon Lees saw the world. He is survived by his family, loved ones, and his closest friends. 

Robert Avon Lees