Alumni Spotlight: Painter Marta Lee
UT alumna Marta Lee may paint unremarkable objects – a vase, a pride flag, a colander – but reviews of her work have been anything but mundane. The New York-based artist’s recent solo show at Tappeto Volante in Brooklyn has garnered coverage in major art publications such as Hyperallergic, Artspiel, The Electric Pencil, and Two Coats of Paint, with writers commenting on the paintings’ invitation to find beauty and complexity in the everyday.
For Lee, seeing friends and gallery visitors closely examine her work (including several fellow School of Art alumni) has been rewarding, especially after creating the large-scale still life paintings in her small home studio in Astoria.
“They barely fit in the room before, so it’s been really cool to see them spaced out properly,” she said. “Another thing that’s kind of fun is that I repeat objects throughout different paintings; a hacky sack might be over there, but it’s also over here. It brings people through the space, and I think lends to a longer viewing experience.”
Lee, a 2024 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grantee, graduated from UT with a BFA in 2014; since then, her work has been exhibited in cities including Austin, Los Angeles, London, and New York. No matter where she goes, her ties to Knoxville have remained strong: as part of the programming for her solo show 11:11 at Tappeto Volante, she sat down for a Q+A with EJ Hauser, a 2013 Artist in Residence at UT.
“That was a very cool experience for me, after being their student 12 years ago,” Lee said. “It was very intimidating too, but it went well. They’re one of my favorite painters.”
Although she now focuses on painting, maintaining a studio practice alongside part-time jobs as a technical assistant at Cooper Union and as a studio assistant/manager for the painter JJ Manford, Lee started off as a printmaking major. Her particular love was reductive relief prints, which allowed her to create works with up to twelve layers of color.
“I think I paint kind of like a printmaker,” she said. “Part of the reason I like using transfer paper in my work is because anywhere you apply pressure, it creates a little bit of noise in the painting; there’s that element of surprise to it.”
Lee prefers to work from direct observation because it allows her to bring multiple perspectives to domestic objects, avoiding a “flatness” that can result from painting from photographs.
“The perspective in my paintings is usually kind of warped,” she said. “There’s a painter, Philip Guston, who says he paints what he wants to see; I see what I want to paint. Things aren’t altered significantly, but everything is placed in a perspective where you can see the part of the object that I was the most drawn to.”
“The perspective in my paintings is usually kind of warped. There’s a painter, Philip Guston, who says he paints what he wants to see; I see what I want to paint. Things aren’t altered significantly, but everything is placed in a perspective where you can see the part of the object that I was the most drawn to.”
Lee’s years at UT were formative to her current practice. Elements from still-life drawings she made during the Yale Auvillar study abroad program appear in many of her paintings, and courses from MFA alumnus Ben Seamons, then-UT Professor Karla Wozniak, Professor Jered Sprecher, and many of the AIRs also made a lasting impression.
“Before I was even at UT, my dad brought me to visiting artist lectures,” said Lee, whose father, emeritus professor of photography Paul Lee, taught in the School of Art from 2002 until 2023. “It was so great seeing all the different kinds of painters come through. A lot of them lived in New York, and it was nice to see young artists and examples of what an artist’s life could be like.”
Now a working New York artist herself, Lee often runs into former UT visiting artists and Artists in Residence at events and galleries.
“I was kind of incessant about talking to the AiRs as a student,” she admits. “But I think it paid off. You can form really good relationships that way.” Several AIRs visited the gallery during her show, including Michael Berryhill (2013), with whom Lee studied, as well as Dominic Terlizzi (2015) (pictured below), Patricia Treib, and Josephine Halvorson (2012).
Currently, Lee is taking time to reorganize her studio after a busy summer and fall preparing for 11:11, with art fairs with Tappeto Volante in Miami and Los Angeles on the horizon. Her advice to art students hoping to practice professionally? Experiment – and make the most of the resources available.
“Really take advantage of the time that you have to make the work,” she said. “And try to not be too shy if you have mentors that you feel drawn to.”
Learn more about Lee’s work at www.martaleeart.com or follow on Instagram @martaleeart.