Gallery EM is pleased to present Searching for You, the fourth solo exhibit for Jeanie Lee held here at Gallery EM. There will be about 60 drawings and 10 paintings of her most recent works put on view at this exhibition.

Jeanie Lee, known for her striking characters and bold-lettered texts painted with stylish combinations of vivid colors and simple black outlines, has keen interest in the various emotions commonly experienced by the people of the modern society as they continuously interact with each other, surrounding environments or given situations throughout the course of their lives.

Lee’s Message Drawing project, which began in 2006 as a means to capture in as simple combination of drawing and text as possible the stories of various emotions commonly experienced by people of the modern society as they continuously interact with each other, surrounding environments, or given situations, has developed from scribble-like pen drawings of a single character along with a brief message in each piece to a much more powerful series of works delivering stories of intricate situations and delicate emotions through longer, stronger texts and a wider variety of colors.

Along with her drawings, the show also features a number of sizable paintings from Lee’s Blow-Up series. They are literally “blow-up” versions of selected message drawings that Lee has chosen carefully to capture the similar sentiments but with magnified effect. 

Jeanie Lee’s works should awaken a memory in every viewer, as each protagonist in her pictures, with large, captivating eyes, confesses a very familiar experience of love, betrayal, loneliness, or identity crisis. This is a story that could have been whispered quietly to a friend, scribbled in the corner of someone’s diary, or sung in the lyrics of a famous pop-song. It is a deeply personal yet universal story that has been experienced by all of us, living among each other, in the contemporary world.