Interview
David Michael Lee b. 1976
Born and raised in Orange County, David Michael Lee holds a BA in photography and studio art from Columbia College in Chicago and an MFA in drawing, painting, and printmaking from California State University Fullerton. Lee has worked in higher education since 2002, engaging with a wide variety of students and allowing the opportunity to be constantly honing his craft as a painter. He serves as the director/curator of the Coastline College Art Gallery in Newport Beach. His work has been exhibited throughout Southern California and has been included in several public and private collections.
David Michael Lee is a painter from Corona del Mar, California who has been committed to abstraction for more than 25 years. I (Julie Perlin Lee) have been in the unique position to watch his work develop over the last 20 years which spans our relationship as colleagues in graduate school together at California State University, Fullerton through our partnership in marriage and as parents today. We have had countless conversations about his art and that of others, but for the first time I asked him to sit with me so I could document the concepts he thinks about as an artist, some questions I have never asked him about his work and what influences his thinking.
J: Hi, and thank you for doing this. For nearly 10 years now you have been perfecting the main subject of your paintings which are hard edge colorful cubes and geometric shapes. What are they all about?
D: They are abstracted forms rooted in the idea of organization, compartmentalizing and unpacking, or packing, of life’s details.
J: Do you think about time or are there aspects of time in your painting?
D: In repetitive use, and re-approach, of the concept of the cuboid; and yes, time in a sense.
J: Do you see these details and ideas to be organized on a macro and a micro level?
D: I appreciate the simplicity of a cube, a shape that can resemble a box, a gift, or a suitcase. The cube is a basic form that we encounter in various aspects of life, from Christmas presents to stacks of wood pallets, or even inventory at big box stores.
While I have worked with cuboids for years, the Cuboids didn’t really make an appearance in my work until the Catalina years (2016-2021). My studio itself was a shipping container, cuboid, in a complex of stacked containers. Anyone looking back at me was looking at me in a cube. Outside my studio window, you would see dry docked boats and stacks of lobster traps, most of which sat for eight months of the year, unused until the season started again.
I think about this shape the same way as reorganizing a pile of disheveled papers into a stack, which eventually becomes a cube; there is a story in there, or at the very least information. Even in our current neighborhood in Laguna Beach, the homes are predominantly cubical. How can you add flair to a cube? I achieve that with light, the addition of geometric bars, and color.
J: Meaning what?
D: I believe that if you create something with enough strength, it can endure indefinitely. So, then it’s like placing your ideas or objects in a box, safeguarding them without discarding them entirely. You can preserve things that may never see the light of day again. However, what you recall being inside that box might not necessarily align with what actually transpired—almost like a blend of memories. This is the structural underpinning of my paintings.
These cubes in my work can resemble still frames from a movie, capturing a moment in time. A still, that moment when the cubes are on the verge to intersect or have just recently passed through each other.
You probably know that I have a penchant for 80s comedy films and, occasionally, heist movies. I tend to watch these movies repeatedly, to the point where I can envision the scenes in my mind without needing to glance at the screen. This repetitiveness is a part of what draws me in. After seeing something ten times, you start to notice imperfections or deviations from the seamless presentation that you might overlook after just one or two viewings.
In today’s age of technology, where things can be flawlessly generated, I find errors in films rather endearing. They don’t ruin the movie for me; in fact, flaws can add character, if the storytelling is compelling. In my artwork, I strive to refine and correct any painterly flaws, but in terms of geometric precision, I sometimes deliberately deviate from the conventional rules of perspective. This allows the viewer to take pleasure in seeing something that doesn’t quite align perfectly or conform to traditional angles.
J: What are you looking at?
D: Look at those houses over there on that hill. They are like an adult Lego set.
J: Does your work reflect reality?
D: I believe that if you suspend your perception, it’s possible. When I think about clunky and pixelated games like Minecraft, they succeed because the construction, people, and storytelling are strong enough to carry the line. So, you can let go of strict representation and be content with pure form. It all hinges on how open the viewer is to distancing themselves from the idea that everything must be hyper-realistic. Take, for example, watching Team America; initially, you see puppets on strings, but with time, you cease to notice the puppets and strings and instead see them as genuine characters.
J: Left field here, but are you an atheist and if so, does that play into your work?
D: Yes, I am an atheist, but I think my work is open enough that it can fit into anyone’s belief system.
J: Could those belief systems be inside your cubes?
D: Sure, they can be anything: a sarcophagus, stacked stones, a wall. The Stonehenge people were just stacking cubes, same with the Egyptians.
When I was teaching drawing, I would tell students who were having trouble with making a form to make a box for that object and use a reductive process to whittle it down until they got to the shape or form they were looking for.
I often contemplate both the successes and shortcomings in architectural and city planning because, once again, I find great fascination in identifying what doesn’t work. Unless you invest a substantial amount of time scrutinizing something, you may not notice these imperfections. I take delight in the act of discovery, much like in the second Ace Ventura movie. In one scene, there’s a table set with a chess game, but in the following shot, the pieces are missing due to a human error. Such errors are acceptable; they’re merely mistakes, and mistakes are part of the process.
J: So, are the mistakes in your work intentional?
D: My approach to using measurements and offset angles is purposeful. I aim for a visually pleasing result, but I also appreciate the notion that the integrity of the work can be questioned. Occasionally, paint might bleed, which serves as another indication that a human created this. It’s a mark or a figurative thumbprint, so to speak. I suppose you could request AI to create a painting that exhibits a human flaw, but it wouldn’t do so intentionally if instructed to simply create a painting.
J: Can we talk about people influences?
D: Some of my most significant influences include past teachers such as Corey Postiglion at Columbia College, as well as working with Tony DeLap, and the encouragement I received from individuals like Tom Dowling. I was particularly captivated by Sol Lewitt’s retrospective at MCA in Chicago in ‘99-00. I have a strong admiration for artists like Shaun Scully, whose work has a soft quality, and I’d describe it as a bridge between my own work and Rothko’s. Other artists who have greatly impacted me include Carl Andre, John McCracken, Larry Bell, Karl Benjamin, Bridget Riley, Carmen Herrera, the Russian Avant-Garde, El Lissitzky, Paul Klee, Lazlo Mahalo-Nagy, the entire Bauhaus movement, and anyone associated with the Light and Space movement. A handful of these artists created sculptures, while I am not a sculptor. However, you can think of my 2-D works
as a memory of something 3-D. When people walk away from my work, I hope they remember it as a three-dimensional object suspended in space. That’s why several of my paintings are titled ‘Floating in Space.’
Have you ever seen heist movies where a safe is being cracked, and the bars come out and interlock perfectly? That’s what crosses my mind when I examine some of the bars in my paintings. In my work, they seem to be trying to fit together, but it’s clear they won’t quite align. I also ponder this when I’m cutting tofu for dinner or cubing a steak.
J: I have intentionally not asked about color yet, but let’s dive into that.
D: A lot of the color in my work comes from looking at things like foods which have amazing colors. Think of the range between broccoli, asparagus and green beans.
J: Does color express idea in your work?
D: Regarding self-expression, color from food shows up in my work. I think about the stacked colored desserts in the arcade in Avalon. Food, it all goes back to organizing. It is really about influence, not self-expression. I don’t like paintings about feelings, and I don’t make work to express who I am, the work is all observational and influenced, for example, yellow and red bars at an angle on the back of service truck or yellow and black stripes on median dividers. Yellow and black, yellow and red. They are all made to capture your attention.
J: Since we are on the topic of food, shall we talk about your sandwiches that you have documented in photos for a decade?
D: I often contemplate sandwiches; they’re inherently layered and stacked. A substantial, ripe red tomato within an otherwise all-green sandwich is truly striking and leaves a lasting impression. When I’m composing colors, it’s akin to adding that tomato; I need to find a balance in what I’ll place on the canvas. Since I primarily work with primary colors, which I mix with white and Paine’s Grey, I can create virtually any color I desire. Using both warm and cool sets of primaries, I have the capability to produce a wide spectrum of colors.
J: Do the shapes in your canvases possess personality?
D: Maybe every once in a while. You might see a bar blasting through the canvas, but not really. They are not funny, not sad, I mean I guess if you sit around long enough, in a geological sense, the shapes might glide into another, and that could be kind of amusing.
I am not thinking about personalities; I am thinking about architecture, municipal lighting phenomena, cargo containers, food and movies.
J: Do you want people to see your hand in your work?
D: I’m ok with people seeing a brushstroke or a touch of human in the painting, a flaw, but I don’t want any of that to take away from the whole. Action painting-wise, I want people to find that if they look long enough, they can anticipate the collision of shapes, like when something goes wrong at a loading dock, the tension is suspended if you give it the time.
J: This idea of suspended time goes back to my first question about micro and macro.
D: On a molecular level, there could be probability of shapes interacting and colliding, like the combustion scene from Oppenheimer. Everything you see in my painting could be happening in a Petri dish. Or it could also be five hot dogs flying through space impacting with a conifer – a picnic disaster. These paintings are permeated with ideas of scale. Sure, my shapes could be paramecium scooting around in pond water or cargo ships on the sea.
Your brain always wants to focus on something, but if you give it the opportunity to focus on something else, for instance through color, you can create an animation through optical observation. This is the moment where the painting is still, but you are also being presented with the opportunity for action through the use of color. I recognize that it is a tool, and I choose to work it into my paintings based on the composition. For example, if I want to draw someone’s attention to one area of the painting than another, I use the allure of color combination.
I think about my dad’s advertising business which had to be concerned with color correction. I remember being interested in registration marks and the four-color process that went into creating an actual print ad.
J: Conceptually, who is your work closest to?
D: Al Held, Ron Davis, Sol Lewitt, Peter Halley... there’s more.
Sorry, going back to food. A grocery store is basically stacks of stuff in so many colors. This especially hit me when we moved back from Avalon, the grocery stores here are so incredible. I love the produce section stocked with the darkest of kales to the bright Bibb lettuce which is so exciting.
J: I hope you don’t mind me mentioning that you do go the grocery store almost every day. Any other influences you want to mention?
D: Vacation, museums, driving. Being a father with two kids and organizing stuff, getting rid of clutter and putting things in boxes so I can go back to them later.
J: How do you prepare for painting? Do you draw?
D: No, my drawings are much more illustrative compilation of clip-art inspired imagery with high-contrast shapes and colors behind them to keep them fun. The drawings are more about the grocery store, the hardware store and driving around looking at things. Just joyful and fun.
I did toy with making paintings that are more representational, but I find I can get away with that in a drawing much more than in a painting.
J: Do you think Lari Pittman gets away with it?
D: Lari Pittman is all about the clutter, I like it, but it is embellished. I like the way he uses color.
J: Are you compelled to make art?
D: If I am not making art, I am always searching for other ways to fill that void.
J: Does music factor into your art making practice?
D: Music plays a role in my earlier work. Today if you had to put music to my work it would sound like instrumental Kraftwerk.
J: Thank you for doing this.
D: It is great to be asked about it.
Some Reviews
Taking in the scope of the work, several ideas come to mind: Lee’s paintings are like flattened sculpture, which you cannot walk around, but which gives you a sense that you might be able to. How are they sculptural? Lee explores how painted shapes move in visible and invisible space. It is as if he is carving into the canvas making our vision dimensional, as the work embraces more than what is actually delineated on a flat surface. Buoyed by — vibrant color, or hemp covered shaped canvasses, or patterns of circles, small brush strokes, stripes, various cartoon-like imagery, or the combining of several canvasses into one — each bold statement declares more than what could be confined in one tight panel.
- Roberta Carasso, Ph.D. Art Professor, Journalist
...once you’ve seen it, the geometric erotica is unforgettable.
- Dave Barton, Arts Writer and Professor
Within his paintings, a range of technical styles are demonstrated, playing with opacity, layering, patterning and color theory. Although simple in design, Lee’s paintings are hypnotic and otherworldly, forcing us to question our perception of shape, form and color. Recalling a classic video game aesthetic in some works, Lee’s cube structures take on an energy of life to them. The cubes are not just shapes but palpable beings and places, lightly holding their hovering stance in the compositions...
-Evan Senn, Curator, Writer, Editor, Professor
