About Lee Wayne Mills
Artist's Statement
I have always felt that I build my art on the foundation of abstract expressionism. What I have sought to do, is to find a way to layer gesture and rhythm in a manner significant beyond the formation of the marks themselves, to juxtapose the structural and painterly events in a way that stages meaning, as words juxtaposed create phrases and clauses.
Assembling these, I hope to make my 'stories' or 'poems', in essence to develop a kind of painterly literature. This effort has led me to explore a collage and assemblage aesthetic in my works. Within them I constantly recycle my own marks and materials- gestures and strokes of paint, ink and resist- cut and torn pieces of cloth and paper and interwoven shapes pulled from earlier pieces.
All of my works echo the fragmented, ever-changing moments of my life, dancing about, alighting, at this moment, in these positions- evoking remembered times and recollected places- a coming together or emotions and ideas which I juggle into some kind of cherishable and enriching experience. They are my mindscapes, topographies of my life.
