Hughie Lee-Smith

(American, b. 1915 - d. 1999)
As an artist, I am at once a participant and a detached observer of the maelstrom of life in contemporary society.  From this perspective, my art is a unique visual account of my own subjective response to what I perceive as a surreal world of mostly gross absurdities, foibles, myths and contradictions.
Viewing my paintings, one can readily see that, despite their reliance on classical representational techniques, they do not stem from a direct confrontation with reality.  Rather, they are indirect projections based on real and imagined visual incongruities by means of which I attempt to express my inner feelings about the outer world.  In essence, my aim is to evoke, through the manipulation of figural imagery, a fresh new insight into the nature of objective reality—beyond the surface.
The respect for tradition, as seen in my employment of realistic symbolism, is primarily traceable to an aesthetic sensibility that was fashioned during my youth as a student in museum art classes where I was introduced to the art of the old masters.  Also, the persistent appearance of the stage-set compositional device, which has characterized much of my work, is a throw-back to my passionate love for the theater, music and modern dance during my early adult years.

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