Lee Harvey Roswell's Page
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Lee Harvey Roswell
34, Male
Freefall, New York, United States - Share
- Blog Posts (5)
- Reviews
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- Artworks (29)
- Photo Albums (3)
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Profile Information
- Website
- http://www.leeharveyroswell.com
- Relationship status
- in a relationship
- Member type
- Artist
- If you're an artist, what kind of art do you make?
- Drawing, Film, Painting, Performance
- I am...
- Lee Harvey Roswell's artwork is simply a portrayal of life, the attention focused on the bonds between suffering and humor. Hence, the many appearances in his work of adversity's most beloved target... the one that bounces back, the Clown. And all the world's a stage in Lee's eyes.
Born and raised in the small town of Freefall, New York, Lee Harvey Roswell was a shy, melancholic daydreamer who exhibited an early aptitude for drawing and the arts. Always marching to a drum that only he could hear, Lee eventually dropped out of school and became a fixed, if peculiar presence at his local library. "Self taught" as the art world likes to say. And, like any good ol' American adventure story, the day came when Lee headed for the sunny promise of the west coast. A bad bit of fortune, he didn't recognize the path he was traveling down was, in fact, the proverbial low road. Casting all his belongings to the wind, living on the streets, eruptive with fits of depression, and spiraling into addictions that nearly destroyed him, Lee was looking like a Van Gogh minus the chance of a posthumous success story. Luckily this little fairytale of a bio ends happily, and Lee did find his way to sobriety, stability, and success. Lee now enjoys working avidly at his craft, pushing himself to new levels, and regarding his profession as one of the most privileged of life-long studies. His work is shown and collected worldwide. Lee Harvey Roswell lives in San Francisco, and thanks his lucky stars for the role he gets to play in this life.
- About my artwork
- The Nothing Manifesto
You all know the Shakespearian line, "nothing will come of nothing," right? A seemingly simple line really. "Nothing will come of nothing." Sure! This is King Lear's response to his loving daughter, Cordelia's refusal to voice her love for her father for the sake of topping her sisters' ridiculously competitive praises.
But in this first scene of the play, Lear is greatly mistaken in his math. This plot-driving miscalculation Shakespeare emphasises by a negation of status, reducing the old king to a Fool's fool. A great deal comes about from that first "nothing." A wake of human drama, disinheritance, deception and seduction, greed and revenge, madness, and death lies within those pages as proof. So, "nothing will come of nothing" has an alchemical esotery to it.
To me, this makes a fine analogy for the tradition of painting. In painting you
have a canvas, or panel, or whatever surface you are working with… the side
of a beached whale, whatever it might be. From the point of visual intrigue or physiology, nothing. Then the painter takes his pigments and their respective vehicles, his tools, his brushes, and through a process of eye to hand prowess he covers that surface. But again, physiologically, spiritually speaking, the painter has only covered nothing with nothing. And this, my friends, is where I introduce my attitude toward aesthetics and craftsmanship. I've watched painters haphazardly spill their paints, splatter them around, make great messes, and still end up with nothing more than nothing. That said, I've also seen painters so studied and accomplished that for all their acquired skills they show nothing after nothing after nothing, and each time it still it amounts to nothing. An overeducated cookie-cutter shaped like a zero. However, a skilled hand attached to the right nervous system, something with the character and the soul necessary for the task, can elevate the very same materials, the very same nothing, to the loftiest heights of human revelation. He can pull our great philosophical obsessions out into the stark light of observation… and all out of nothing!
So in painting and my attempts to achieve this ideology, I am not interested in abstract art, or cutesy sentimental art, or childish art, or political art, or graffiti
art, or post-Picasso laziness, or what breakfast cereals you ate and what television programs you watched when you were a kid. None of that matters to me. Without the least hint of apology I tell you to me it's nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No, I'm interested in exactly this: creating narratives involving the fantastic images there to be culled forth from those fertile depths of the creative, neurotic-like mind. Concrete objects in mad motion, reflecting all the seductive, terrifying elements of existence. The inarguable forerunner of the senses is the eye. We are primarily an optically reliant species. So, as pictorial illusionists transforming nothing into artifacts of spiritual sustenance, I'm holding the potential painter up, not just as an admirable tradesman, but much, much more. He resides as a high-priest over that all-devouring human reality, a conducting channel through which nothing triumphantly becomes something.
-LHR, 04.01.07, SF
- Interests
- Life, love, and art. That's about it though.
Lee Harvey Roswell's Blog
The Roswell Files Oct./ Nov. 2008
The Skinny... New in the LHR Store: -Holiday Print Sale! Now until December 25th, save 25% off all prints: - 11x14"s and 12x12"s regularly priced@ $100, now just $75 -16x20"s and 20x20"s regularly priced @ $200, now just $150 Or, order any $100 print at regular price and get a free Ernie's Crossroads poster with your purchase; order any $200 print at regular price, and get two free posters with your purchase. -Give a Gift Certificate! A great gift for the holidays or any occasion. Shows:… Continue
Posted on 14th November 2008 at 4:16am —
The Roswell Files, July/ August 2008: "Worst Roswell Files Ever!"
The Skinny... -The full plate vs. sun-dried nudes. It's Boining Man 2008 (opening babble, three paragraphs of silly sentimental meanderings, please skip) -(And a bit of after-the-fact promotional anticlimax) New LHR painting The Recital, at the premier of New Brow, at the Alternative Cafe in Monterey, CA -New prints from the Mugshots series, and... $20 posters coming next month! (Poignant matter! Start paying attention here, paragraph #5) -LHR painting and prints on auction Thursday night, J… Continue
Posted on 29th July 2008 at 10:58pm —
The Roswell Files May/ June 2008: "Mugshots"
The Skinny: -June 7th, Lee Harvey Roswell's Mugshots at Accident Gallery in Eureka, California -June 13th, LHR turns 34 (No leg-pulling this time, my word of honor.) -New Mugshots and Stills Are Still Moving prints in the store The Fat: Dear Readers, We're leaving off with that dead end roadside banter for May/ June here in Roswell-well-well-land, because it occurs to me, we've got business to discuss, you and me. And besides, how far can you go with that Beckett-like self-negating nonsense?… Continue
Posted on 21st May 2008 at 9:33pm —
The Roswell Files, May 2008: "Buy and Buy, Dear Readers, Buy and Buy"
The Skinny: -More babble from the road -The online store, http://leeharveyroswell.com/store/store_prints_pg1.html is now open for your business, at http://leeharveyroswell.com/store/store_prints_pg1.html. Sharpen your credit cards! -The buzz about the further adventures of Stills Are Still Moving The Fat: Wish you were here Dear Readers, You could tell me where the hell we are! As I told you last month, I don't drive-- I'm a genius you understand, look right through the road signs -- and su… Continue
Posted on 13th May 2008 at 8:20pm —
The Roswell Files, March 2008: "From Points Unknown"
The Skinny: -On the road -www.leeharveyroswell.com updated, new prints -Triclops! Out of Africa CD release party March 21st -Red Dot Fair NYC, March 27-30 (www.reddotfair.com) -LHR artwork @ Capture Fine Arts Gallery in Sausalito, Shooting Gallery and Triptych Restaurant in San Francisco -The LHR Wanted Ads: need an old bicycle and bike pump for a triptych of Flann O'Brian's Third Policeman The Fat: Dear Readers, I'm writing you all from the road. Which one, I don't know. I don't drive see,… Continue
Posted on 19th March 2008 at 9:14pm —
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Great work! I don't know if it would be too late. I will pass you details on and we will see :)
I love "The dressing room" . Your work is incredible. Excellent.
I love it.
Anìbal Nazzaro
I love your work ¨ Vermeer, Without Vermee ¨
Regards
Marta
Welcome to artreview.com. It would be great to see some of your work here...
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