Lee Christiansen

Christiansen thinks of his work as a kind of evolving process that draws from a diversity of influences. As a child he was affected by the work of Vincent Van Gogh. He marvelled at the way the paint sat upon the canvas almost seemed to move. Later, in college he became obsessed with some of the abstract expressionists, notably Willem DeKooning, whose paintings also had strong movement and powerful although sometimes troubling images. Works by Marc Chagall, Emile Nolde, and Franz Marc were significant for their emotional color use.

His technique have shifted in the last few years from heavy impasto and surface texture to more transparent layers of glazes. He states, “My personal motives for making art stem from a deep seated compulsion to express my visual interpretations of my surroundings; of things as I see them.”