07/64 A jewel of the realm. As within so without Painting

Lee Spence (b:1989) Designer. Born and raised in Plymouth, England. "My work explores themes of time, balance, space and pattern. Most of my attempt is at creating internal landscapes, to visualize some of the inner workings of how we feel and think when we find ourselves in certain moods. What that can look like. I'm interested most in producing work that captures a mood in one way or another. That's how I like to use shape and color. Once a painting or a design is done I like to keep looking back at it to check whether it feels like the original mood I was making it in and/or for. If it matches then I'm happy with it, and it acts like a kind of tool to remind me of or bring me back to that mood. That's really it. I'm letting go of them having to look a certain way and thinking more about how they feel when you look at them. And because so much of my commercial graphic design work is by-the-book so to speak; logos, ads, that kind of thing, I tend to lean pretty heavily into the abstract when I create my personal stuff." OVRLPS is a new series of printed designs that continues the theme of finding some sense of internal balance amongst the chaos of the outside. "Balance to the People" was my last full set of paintings that I made during the pandemic in 2020. There were 9 large format "spontaneous" paintings where I created the initial layout of shapes in a single moment and then spent time filling in colors and additional elements that honored that original moment. They were all on hand-built stretchers and with frames I custom made too. It felt good and I was happy with the outcome. I learned a lot. The works are displayed over on my website leexOVRLPS. But with OVRLPS I'm wanting to do something different, this time using the computer to build these abstract generative designs of random circles that scatter on an artboard, leaving behind only the parts that overlap, for which I add color to and then layer ontop of eachother in different ways. This to me symbolizes how our lives interact with others and those are the moments that are highlighted and meaningful. It's a project of conceptual works that hope to speak to the viewer in a way that feels familiar but new and fresh. Like you know them but you're just not quite sure where from. The prints are giclées which are hand-signed and numbered.