V.W.L Women’ s Year
Winter 2012
THE ART OF VALERIE WON LEE
Valerie Won Lee’s striking art is markedly abstract figurative in style. The prevailing mood is one of futurism, making striking use of connecting lines, form, colour and montage. Political and social themes hover in the background but never predominate. Instead, the viewer is invited to come into Won Lee’s vision, often a dreamscape or the stuff of nightmare, through a montage of messages on every canvas. Her fusion of Asian and worldwide influences and values produces portraits replete with sadness, arrogance, sassiness and even cruelty. Giving her work on occasion something akin to a gangster-like quality. The eyes of her characters, for the most part women, convey powerful passions and sometimes anger. Frames, windows, stars, planets and rain punctuate the main subject in many of Won Lee’s paintings. Checkerboards reflect her feeling that life can be like a chess game, that strategy wins through – amounting to what could be termed “chess-art” in some of her work. The dark motif that underlines much of Won Lee’s work is not an absolute. Her art is a constant journey and evolution following the vision of an artist who is very much of the modern world yet who makes connections with humanity’s history. In the end, salvation from the traps that surround us is in the hands of us all. Art is a powerful inspirer of change; Won Lee’s contribution to this is, and will be, significant. In her words “Creating is breaking the rules” BIOGRAPHY Valerie Won Lee’s art springs from the well of her experience. Adopted at an early age, an Asian growing up in an old European country, Won Lee found herself adapting to the new culture into which she was thrown yet always retaining a link to the culture from which she had been separated. Entirely self-taught, art has been a lifelong journey for her. Experimentation is at the heart of her art, as in her life. For fifteen years she travelled independently worldwide, inspiring a passionate political, social and cultural agenda for her life and work. One experience in particular was seminal – teaching children living in the garbage dump of Guatemala City and then at the “Refugio de La Paz” in El Salvador. Valerie Won Lee’ s work is a journey through cultures, classes and her vision of the world. In this, it mirrors her own life. Contact: valeriewonlee@gmail.com
BUDAPEST
CUCUMBER DANCE
WOMEN NATURE
POINTY HAT
C A KILLER
PARIS
ROARING TWENTIES
3D
FASHION
GREEN TEA
TWENTIES PARTY
20’S HAIRCUT
20-20 EVOLUTION