Who is Jessie Lee?

Currently an undergrad student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Jessie is pursuing a Bachelors degree in the College of Fine Arts, focusing her studies on painting and drawing.

In addition to art, Jessie Lee is a Las Vegas based singer / songwriter / musician. Playing around the Las Vegas valley and Reno, she has entertained at house parties, coffee shops: Saxby's, It's A Grind, Starbucks, ReJAVAnate, Java Jungle; campus open mic nights, the 2007 Annual UNR Student Talent Show, The Nevada Museum of Art, and Las Vegas' House of Blues. Currently, Jessie Lee plays with band members Jamie Paris, Ian Shane Tyler, Charles Henry, and Trevor Mayfield (of Atwood Recording Studios) - with the intentions of recording a 10 to 13 track album.

Artist Statement.

      Art is creation.  I live for creation.  To exist now, in this great design, and live numbly to the glory and overwhelming intricacy of splendor surrounding me as a human would be to deny a certain imaginative expression, a certain pressing need for a creative connection to the world and what is beyond which so immerses my soul.  I live to illustrate this compulsion of expression and entanglement of the spirit.  
                                                                                                                      
         Thus, my hands create.  Utilizing oil paints in my most recent work as a vehicle, I have fallen in love with the patience and process which so embodies oils.  Working with acrylics most of my painting life, I have never focused on rendering, on laying down foundational pieces and then allowing myself to step back, placing faith in the promise that tomorrow it shall grow and turn into something rich, deep, visibly layered.  Thus, I paint, having fallen been seduced by the playing of color and time. 
                                                                                                                    
         I attempt to execute my works with an intentional tension, searching for that balance between well rendered depiction and raw abstraction.  I want the viewer to not only see the painting for what it is – a canvas moving with apparent strokes of the brush – but to also feel the painting, that they may resonate with the tension, bringing forth their innermost parts of untouched emotion:  raw unutterable desires and misgivings of the soul.                                                                                                                      
        Currently, my work attempts to pull out such smothered sensations through the imagery of the human figure. Using the famous King David of the Old Testament as my muse, I strive to present – from what many believe to be elevated, untouchable characters – the raw emotive humanity and uncivilized nature of the soul which so easily becomes apparent when focusing on those sinful desires of man.  Let our hearts cry out with the lost in the darkness, that we may see our shadowed selves in their disgraceful place.