Catherine Lee

(American, born 1950)

Catherine Lee is an American artist known for both her sculptures and paintings featuring irregular grids and tile-like patterns. Lee frequently uses black and monochrome colors in her works because she believes it adds a hostile note to her work. “I have a really strong belief in the power of abstraction,” she has said. “My work refers to things in the world tangentially, but it’s not at all representational.” Born in 1950 in Pampa, TX, she went on to receive her BA is studio arts from San Jose State University in California. Influenced by the Minimalist works of Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman, Lee began exploring the grid after relocating to New York in the mid-1970s. The artist cites her childhood landscape of the Texas Panhandle as a major influence on her abstractions. Lee currently lives and works between Wimberely, TX and New York, NY. Her works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and the Tate Modern in London, among others.