* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Lee Gainer grew up in the blue collar suburbs, winning numerous art awards including three National Cappy Dick contests. Lee attended Virginia Commonwealth University on scholarship and earned a BFA with honors in Communication Arts with an emphasis in Photography. After working in the state’s forensics photography lab, Lee moved to Orlando (because her car wouldn’t make it to San Francisco) and worked for the Walt Disney Company as a photographer. In 2001, she relocated to the Washington D.C area. After managing the studio of an internationally acclaimed painter, she decided to concentrate on her own art career full-time beginning in 2007.
Lee describes her work by saying, “I create works that examine how memories are constructed. Snapshots of vacation spots, spring break, amusement parks, parades, beauty pageants, the circus, and other fantastical guilty pleasures are translated into detailed line drawings and then overlaid to create semi-abstract compositions. These new images display a somewhat mysterious yet subtlety familiar space that holds a collision of diluted symbolism and traces of nostalgia.”