Sadie Lee
Traditional painting generally
presents woman as an object of desire. She can be soft and seductive, or even
vulgar; she can be anything but the subject who desires. That is simply
unthinkable. The young British painter, Sadie Lee (born in 1967) depends in her
work on both traditional subjects, as well as traditional methods of oil
painting; by focusing on the woman’s perspective, however, she changes these
traditions and parodies the old masters. Between 1992 and 1998 she won four consecutive prizes and
recommendations for the best portrait (BP Awards) given by the British National
Portrait Gallery. In 1994 her first independent exhibition, Venus Envy, was
staged in Manchester City Art Galleries. In 1995 Portraits were shown in Green
Street. In 1997 Lee had an exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery in
London; it was entitled A Dying Art: Ladies of Burlesque, and in it she
presented portraits of ageing starlets of vaudeville, a
form of entertainment popular in the 1940’s. While the splendour of vaudeville
disappeared a long time ago, its starlets still radiate a primitive allure and
glamour. “I wanted to paint each woman in a proud and dignified way, and at the
same time let her strong sexual identity triumph over her ageing appearance.”
A year later she exhibited work
in the East West Gallery in London. The title of the exhibition was
Inappropriate Women, and she portrayed women of unconventional looks or
behaviour who do not meet the norms of society.
Sadie Lee paints women. But her
work is not exclusively intended for either gender. Through her work she
addresses people who are capable of maintaining eye contact, because her
pictures look back and ignore the traditional categories of subject and object.
If you cannot maintain eye contact, Don’t look.