CARLYLE WOLFE LEE Wonder
11 February - 15 March 2025
Thad and I celebrated our son Luke’s first birthday January 27th, so this body of work, made in my first year of motherhood, marks a season of extraordinary joy and novelty. The paintings are reflections on a spring that I watched from Luke’s nursery window. When we came home from the hospital and got settled in our nursing chair, daffodil foliage was just beginning to push up. Making contour line drawings and color studies has always been about slowing down and connecting with nature’s pace for me, but this was a new kind of slowing down, observing, and connecting. I was breaking a long pattern of studio productivity, and I felt good about that not only for my family but also for my work. Years of having observed the seasons through the disciplines of my studio practice added richness to a very new experience of spring.
Holding baby Luke in my arms, we watched the daffodil foliage stretch and expand. When the first yellow blooms emerged, our whole household celebrated. I thought of an extraordinary time-lapse sequence of photographs in the BBC’s nature documentary Life: Plants (2009) that revealed the dancing movements of bulb flowers, ferns, and vines as they grew in a spring woodland garden. At the time, I had pondered the familiarity of these gestures that we witness over weeks and the surprise of encountering them reframed into one minute. Now I am pondering a new reframing of my experience.
I thought of an extraordinary time-lapse sequence of photographs in the BBC’s nature documentary Life: Plants (2009) that revealed the dancing movements of bulb flowers, ferns, and vines as they grew in a spring woodland garden. At the time, I had pondered the familiarity of these gestures that we witness over weeks and the surprise of encountering them reframed into one minute. Now I am pondering a new reframing of my experience.The fullness of spring followed the blooming daffodils while Luke and I kept watch. Storms blew cold rain against our window. Lively greens gradually outnumbered gentle earth tones. Spring branches flowered, and their blossoms fluttered. The open tree canopy gradually filled with leaves and filtered intensifying sunlight.
As I mixed colors for my paintings, I liked identifying small amounts of other hues like soft violets, minty greens and blush pinks, and I especially enjoyed mixing a variety of muted blue-greens. While I referred to Almond Blossom loosely, I intended from the beginning to finish my paintings with similar muted blue-green skies. My first two paintings, Spring Brances - Dream and Spring Branches - Hope Fulfilled, went in different directions because I could not resist adding the muted blue-greens in early layers. For the third, Spring BranchesAfter Almond Blossom, I carefully mapped out a plan using swatches and reserved the muted blue-green midtones for the final layer
My first two paintings, Spring Brances - Dream and Spring Branches - Hope Fulfilled, went in different directions because I could not resist adding the muted blue-greens in early layers.
For the third, Spring Branches - After Almond Blossom, I carefully mapped out a plan using swatches and reserved the muted blue-green midtones for the final layer
Carlyle Wolfe Lee received her BFA in Painting from the University of Mississippi and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from Louisiana State University. Her work was recently selected for The Art in Embassies Program at the US Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique. She has exhibited work throughout the South including, including recently at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center, the University of Charleston, the Shaw Center for the Arts, the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, the University of Mississippi Museum, and the Arkansas Museum of Fine Art. She currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
ARTWORK LIST
in catalog order; all pieces oil on panel
Spectacular Winter, 48x72
Daffodils From Nursery Window, 20x48
Night Bloom, 48x72
Native Gardens, 48x48
Forget- Me-Not Path, 20x48
Bright Spring I, 36x48
Bright Spring II, 36x48
Bright Spring III, 36x48
Spring Branches- After Almond Blossoms, 60x48
Spring Branches- Hope Fulfilled, 60x48
Spring Branches- Dream, 60x48