Including - Madison Originals Magazine

tenured appointment as a professor in
the University of Wisconsin School
of Economics. However, Lee was
disappointed to discover Madison’s
dearth of galleries. “I felt isolated and
removed from the infl uences of artists
and art-related activities I had enjoyed in
California and Minneapolis,” she recalls.
“This enforced isolation impacted my
development as an artist.” During those
years she showed her art in Chicago,
Ann Arbor, New York, and Washington
D.C. “Today, Madison’s art climate
has changed. It is erupting. Artists are
everywhere,” she says.
It is the unpredictable quality of her
medium that, in 1965, turned a studio
accident into the answer she had sought
for increased texture in her surfaces.
She inadvertently stumbled upon a
signature technique when she decided
to turn a failed painting over and start
again on the back. The second attempt
turned out to be worse than the fi rst.
Pulling the wet painting off the table to
throw it away, she discovered interesting
textures on the original side. Playing
with this process of fl ipping the paper
she found that with each turn the wet
surface picks up paint deposited on her
paint table.
“I took the introduction that the
accident gave me and explored it as far
as I have been able to do to date. And
Georges Prairie
I’m still learning,” she says. “Keeping
such an extensive surface wet and
alive requires the ability of a slightly
demented ballerina,” Lee jokes. She
paints sideways, from up and down,
reaching across the full width of the
stretched paper, and frequently washing
out areas by brushing over them with
the wet three-inch fl at bristle brushes
which she prefers for much of her work.
While satisfi ed with the texture her
monoprinting method produces, Lee
uses this as just one of her techniques.
More than half of her present-day pieces
are painted directly with a brush. She
never uses chemicals, salt, or sponges.
She mixes colors and uses a technique
of direct application and the lifting out
of color on the white paper with the use
of a “thirsty” brush.
In 1984, when she was 56, Lee’s
painting career was interrupted by a
serious illness. “It’s a miracle that I
am alive today,” says Lee, an ovarian
cancer survivor. Today, her energy
level and youthful appearance belie her
82 years. She attends weekly history
and biography classes offered through
Participatory Learning and Teaching
Organization (PLATO), a program for
learning in retirement. She walks a mileand-a-half
before breakfast, attends Tai
Chi class, belongs to a play-going group
and a potluck group, and is an active
member of the First Unitarian Society.
With classical music playing in the
background, she paints in her home
studio with its lush view of a forest that
borders a nearby park.
As a young artist, Lee was represented
in San Francisco by Gump’s. “That was
a big deal,” she says. And just before
moving to Madison, she was given a
solo show at the California Palace of the
Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The
Franz Bader Gallery, a premiere gallery
in Washington D.C., represented Lee
Weiss for decades, leading to having
paintings in the White House, the NASA
commissions, and commissions by the
Department of the Interior. The latter
led to having a painting in the National
Gallery in Washington D.C. And her
proud moments continue. Last year, Lee
received a Lifetime Achievement medal
from the national Watercolor Honor
Society. “I am very proud of that award,”
says Lee.
For more information about Lee’s work,
visit leeweiss.com.
Jackie Bradley is a freelance writer.
Photographs provided by Lee Weiss.
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