b. 1985
Richard Yu-Tang Lee (1985) is a multidisciplinary artist who makes work about the cooperation of opposites as a way of processing and expressing his life experiences and worldview.
Lee was born in Chicago, IL. He received a BA in graphic design at the Illinois Institute of Art and studied figure drawing at Drawing Workshop. His first solo show, “I Come in Peace” at Firecat Projects in Chicago in 2021, shortly led to another in the same year, “Return Stroke” in his newly adopted City of Portland, ME. In 2022, he was selected for a Springboard Artist Grant through the Maine Arts Commission with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, and in the fall of 2023, Lee was chosen to participate as an artist in residence at the Tao Hua Tan Artist Creation Camp in Anhui, China. In 2024 Lee mounted two new solo exhibitions – “Rain In A Burning Garden” at ReMax Gallery in Portland, ME and making his Canadian debut, “Visiting Friends In Helle” at L.L. Contemporary, in Toronto. Two of the works from the most recent show (Visiting A Friend In Helle #4 and NEW DEATH) were featured in The Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy. Lee currently lives in Portland, ME, where he paints and co-owns Little Brother Chinese Food – a growing frozen Chinese food business and a performative artistic practice operated with his wife and collaborator, Claire Guyer.
“This work allegorically illustrates a psychological state or a component of the psyche.”
Q. If you could offer your younger self any advice at the start of your artistic career, what would it be?”
A. “Trust yourself and follow what you love about your practice. You should compare yourself or your work to that of others’ only to the point of establishing that everyone does this differently and that there is no path. Keep making what you love. Stay in constant touch with the subjects and processes you love. Every time you step into your creation space, call on what you love to bring you the power to say what you were brought here to say.”