About the Artist
Lee Edwards Bio
Capturing Natural Beauty
Lee Edwards, a resident of Duarte, California, is a plein air landscape artist. He was born in Los Angeles and grew up in northern Georgia where at the age of 12 his first painting instructor at a local community art center gave encouragement by offering possible future scholarship to the University of Georgia art department. Serious art study began at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio as well as the University of Southern California. While a student at the University of Wisconsin majoring in fine art, he studied art history, design, life drawing and painting. He was assigned as assistant to the British pop-realist painter Malcolm Morley who was artist-in-residence. A summer was spent traveling in Europe where he saw many of the art works he had studied in art history. At the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio he continued study in life drawing, sculpture, painting and film history. After completion of a B.A. degree in Fine Art at La Sierra University in Riverside, California, Lee took graduate study at the University of Southern California where he learned the various crafts of filmmaking and earned an MFA degree in Cinema specializing in post-production. He began his professional life as a documentary film and video editor and worked in non-fiction film in Los Angeles and Boston. Filmmaking highlights included feature documentaries for PBS and Discovery and an Emmy award as writer and editor.
In 2007, Lee returned to the traditional art mediums of drawing and painting working primarily in plein air landscape, impressionist style. He painted in workshops with established artists Brian Blood, Kathleen Dunphy, John Cosby, Jim Wodark, Frank Serrano, Ray Roberts and Colley Whisson. In 2008 he exhibited a one-man show of landscapes at the Claremont Forum Gallery in Claremont, California. Since then, his paintings have been exhibited in juried shows at the Huntington Library and Museum in San Marino, the Oil Painters of America National Exhibition and the OPA Western Regional Exhibition, the Long Beach Art Museum, the Riverside Art Museum, the California Art Club, the Joshua Tree National Park Art Exhibitions, the Tehachapi Arts Commission, and various West Coast gallery group shows.
A selective list of exhibitions and awards:
2026 San Marino League "Art Matters" show at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
2022 San Marino League at Huntington Museum, Library and Botanical Center "Spring Into Art" show
2018-2019 Hillside Fine Art gallery group shows, Claremont, CA
2017 Joshua Tree National Park Art Exhibition - Honorable Mention Award
2017 Saga Fine Art gallery, Monrovia, CA
2017 Santa Paula Art Museum "Art About Agriculture" and "Golden State Splendor" exhibits
2017 California Art Club "Quintessential California" at the Altadena Country Club
2016 Los Angeles Plein Air Festival - Purchase Award
2010 Long Beach Art Museum, "Artists Explore Long Beach"
2010 Wagner Ring Festival art exhibit with California Art Club, Fine Arts Building, Los Angeles
2010 Oil Painters of America Western Regional Exhibit, Jackson, WY
2010 Oil Painters of America National Exhibit Scottsdale, AZ
2009 City of Brea Art Gallery "Made in California"
2009 San Gabriel Fine Art Association - Best of Show and First Place Awards
2008 Huntington Museum, Library and Botanical Center "Art Matters" show
2008 Mid-Valley Arts League - Second Place Award
Artist Statement:
I enjoy the challenge of interpreting nature seen from direct observation. I am especially drawn to the color harmonies of the desert. In recent years I have been fascinated by the sculptural forms of cactus. Painting is a great pleasure and also a perpetual challenge as each painting presents unique opportunity for creative solutions and new aesthetic visions. My best work results from harnessing my painting skills with intuition and feeling, creating a sense of place and mood. It is a vocation which demands concentrated critical observation, discipline and hard work which in turn inspires creative growth. Beautiful landscapes can be anywhere on earth but successful compositions require limiting the endless possibilities to workable solutions, simplifying shapes, editing out extraneous elements, adding needed shapes and moving some elements around, always taking care to maintain natural and accurate color harmony. Experience has taught me when to stop painting and also when to set a painting aside for further reflection and needed adjustments. Usually a painting can be about 85% completed on location and then 15% touched up in studio. When a finished painting is completely dry it is then varnished and framed.
