The collages in Sophie Lee’s Sunday Paintings are an accumulation of the little histories of the sites they are made from. The work begins with ephemeral installations built on land overgrown with wildlife near urban areas. This event is photographed and then edited down to singular shapes, forms, and colors. The context is lost, and the fragments of that reality are then reconfigured on a two dimensional plane with pieces cut from larger paintings on paper, and everyday materials such as a scrap of wood, or a piece of a shower curtain or tablecloth. Materials extracted from disparate sources are pushed up against one another to merge into a form that coheres while carefully balancing a sense of tension. High and low materials are culled and then submerged in the formal language of painting.  

Sophie Lee has a BA from Mills College and an MFA from  the University of California, Irvine. Her work has recently been included in exhibitions at Human Resources, The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, and Beacon Arts Building. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.