Sophia Lee

I’ve been drawing eever since i could hold a pencil. I was an introverted as a child, and being multilingual, didn’t help. The pencil helped me communicate when I couldn’t find the right words. I always felt a disconnect between what I was thinking and feeling with what I spoke, but the pencil was able to pierce the gaps for me. The pencil connects all of the different versions of myself, so that the viewer sees the complete whole. I studied fashion design, and then painting and design, at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. Upon graduation, I moved to New York where and spent several years designing book covers for St. Martin’s Press. In September 2001, I quit my job and became semi-nomadic, traveling and living in cities in Europe, Asia and the U.S. I chanced upon a set of beautiful brush pens in Japan in 2005, and began painting/ and drawing again. I and held my first solo exhibit in 2007 in Taipei, Taiwan. For me, making art is like meditating through the brush. I put down the first line and follow it as a thought, watching it grow organically. Through an exploration of the natural environment, I try to capture and reveal their inner beauty of found objects with my calligraphic-style paint strokes. This watercolor/ and ink series emerged from was my personal challenge in 2015 to create one painting a day for 100 days in 2015. Much of what I observed and experienced during each day would find its way onto the paper. 100 days turned into 300 days. I’m currently in a residency program at the Journal Building through ArtSpan in SF.