Artist Statement

Alexis Lee is an American painter and sculptor who explores the collective and personal unconscious through contemporary mythology and folklore. Pursuing unique iterations of the universal narrative, she studies archetypes and symbols in diverse cultures of storytelling to develop and re-shape the landscape of Chaos, the void before creation, transforming it into the private abyss of the unconscious, buried in our bodies like memory. The figures that wander this predatory plane are violently abbreviated or anatomically outrageous, capturing the spectral imprints of the human conditions as they work to overcome their vessels.

Her work emerges through exposed layers of process, using gesture and resistance to form lines of destruction that collapse order and trace the mind losing its way. The markings passionately tell stories of their creation and of bodies caught in the act of becoming.

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Through the unconscious, we wake into a universe of turbulent luminosity. 

We navigate an ocean of symbols that allow us to glimpse the energies of divine chaos and order, and hold a mirror to humanity without the limitations of gender, race or time. 

Myths, folklore and fairytales are written and oral proof of the collective unconscious. They simply represent connection and provide us with the most profound and ancient reassurance- that we are not alone in the courage to carry life forward. The spiritual guide present in every iteration of the Monomyth, the Hero’s Journey, affirms just that. In the Turkish fairy tale of Iskender, it is the green bird who reminds a young boy through his great trials that he will always find help when it is needed. 

In this collection of work, I wanted to focus on “Sacred Spaces” activated by human experience. I believe that Sacred Spaces can only be realized by our existence as we are the only ones that give meaning and voice to the divine. If the collective unconscious is the radiant tapestry, the personal unconscious, are the only lens through which we can see, feel and attempt to understand it.

 I also wanted to challenge that symbols, as they are perceived as living texture in mythology, must shift in contemporary storytelling to reflect changing times while respecting fixed archetypes. In particular, I wanted to take animals that most often represent human character- the masculine and aggressive energies 

Coincidentia Oppositorum, a state in which contradictory essences co-exist in a human reality.