From Krishna Adams, Director of Visual Arts, Craft, Media and Design –
Anthony Lee
Muralist Anthony Lee is the FY23 Individual Artist Fellowship recipient in mural arts. Though Lee considers himself a Memphian, his work has been influenced partly by the culture and heritage of the places where he’s lived. He credits his West Indian roots as an essential contributing factor in his creative development and his vivid palette as being inspired while growing up in his boyhood home of St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
During the 1990s, Lee was a student of Bill Hicks, a high school art teacher who doubled as an instructor at Memphis College of Art. After graduation, Lee served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army’s 82d Airborne Division. Upon returning to civilian life, he studied at North Carolina State University College of Design in 2001.
Lee’s art brings bright colors, sharp lines, and interesting shapes to the environments he enhances, such as bike lanes, sidewalks, and overpasses. A practicing professional artist for 19 years, Lee credits the works of Sean Scully, Stan Whitney, Peter Halley, and Richard Mayhew as strong influencers of his work. After leaving college, Lee became less concerned with his work’s subject matter, narratives, and content and more intrigued with the technical aspects of arranging color-saturated compositions. His current studio practice involves creating large abstract expressionist works.
City planners were exploring ways to enhance the pedestrian experience on downtown Memphis streets, Lee developed a unique pattern that can act as an interesting visual filler for street spaces now reserved for pedestrian use.
“Regarding my approach to mural-making, I always attempt to fully integrate my imagery or patterns into the nature and vistas of the surrounding urban-scape. I enjoy designing site-specific solutions with paint, color, and concept; and pushing the viewer’s expectation of what the medium of paint can visually achieve, by using geometry and scale.” – Anthony Lee
The Individual Artist Fellowship IAF in Mural Arts recognizes and acknowledges an outstanding professional artist who, by education, experience, or natural talent, engages in a particular art form or discipline and resides and works in Tennessee. Each year different out-of-state adjudicators, who are professionals with expertise, review all the applications submitted. The IAF is a competitive grant, and the Commission encourages artists to apply again if they do not receive the grant. Lee would advise artists that are considering applying for this fellowship to “be certain that they’ve had some years-long traction in their respective Tennessee communities regarding art or their creative practice. The impact, contributions, and visibility that they’ve attained should easily be validated by the peers and professionals of the same field within the same community.”
Lee has already used some of the IAF award funds to purchase materials to scale up his canvas paintings in anticipation of a solo show at a commercial gallery within the next year. He also plans to buy new creative digital equipment to help enhance his studio process.
“I am so very grateful to the State of Tennessee, being my primary environment, for having nurtured my youthful abilities into art, and thusly, enabling me as an adult Tennessean to contribute my talent and vision in a truly viable way. I’ve had great teachers, coaches, mentors, colleagues, and friends, all willing to share and guide me on my path to becoming a highly respected artist within my hometown. All of the local art agencies, museums, commercial and community developers, colleges, and school systems have had a major impact on my life and career by enabling me to produce my work to add value to the sights and people around me. I love Memphis and the state that it lives in. This award merits me to continue forward on my journey of creation and sharing that creation.” – Anthony Lee
Lee’s work has been featured at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Powerhouse, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis College of Art, Arkansas Arts Center, National Civil Rights Museum, Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts, and several galleries throughout the U.S. He has also created many public art projects and large-scale mural works, of which one was nationally recognized and awarded in 2009 when Americans for the Arts Public Art Network identified his Modern Hieroglyphs mural as one of the top 40 public artworks created that year. In 2012, Lee received the Emmett O’Ryan Award (the “Emmett”) for Artistic Inspiration.
Currently, Lee is working on two murals for the FedEx HQ in downtown Memphis; and concurrently preparing to produce pedestrian-friendly placemaking designs on asphalt around a Memphis elementary school. If that was not enough, he is also assisting high school art students in an area suburb to produce an on-campus mural. With whatever free time he has, Lee plans to produce a prototype coffee-table book of his various abstract works and color studies.
