John Lees
Arm Chair, 1983
About the artist
John Lees studied at Los Angeles City College before completing BFA and MFA degrees at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Lees taught at Bard College, the School of Visual Arts, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston before taking his current position at the New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture.
Lees is known for building up thick layers of paint in his somewhat abstracted depictions of landscapes, still lives and the human figure. He spent several years working on the subject he adopted at Island Press, the armchair. His work is included in the collections of the New Museum in New York and the Kemper Collection of the Kansas City Art Institute. Among his list of awards is a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.