Coexisting Love & Sorrow: Artist Spotlight on Raime Lee

Artist Bio: Raime Lee is a figurative and representational artist. Her fine art investigates emotions and themes of life and death by using both figure and environment in her image-making. She faces the uncomfortable depths within to better understand the breadth of sorrow and love that coexist together, encouraging others to do the same. 

Prior to her studies at Kendall College of Art and Design, Raime graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from Michigan State University (2013), where she earned an athletic scholarship on the Women’s Varsity Softball Team.

After several years away from her artistic talents, she began to draw again with the encouragement of those close to her. Within months, she was accepted into Kendall College of Art and Design’s Illustration program earning KCAD’s Excellence Award and Merit scholarships. She recently graduated from KCAD in 2020 and was chosen as the Valedictorian of the graduating class.

Raime was granted a scholarship to attend the New York Academy of Art Summer Residency in 2020. She has shown at the Regional Art Show – Festival of the Arts (Grand Rapids, MI), the 91st Michigan Contemporary Art Exhibition – Muskegon Museum of Art (Muskegon, MI), and Michigan Now: Annual Juried Fine Arts Exhibition (Petoskey, MI), winning the judge’s second place award.

Artist Statement

I find it a great honor to paint, to be in conversation with great artists who lived hundreds of years before me. Through this medium and many others, they spoke to us about what it was like to be human throughout the ages.

As an introspective person, my inner world revolves largely around profound sentiments or impactful events in my life. There is a place these memories and feelings reside within all of humanity. I investigate this melancholy state and themes of life and death by using both figure and environment in my image-making. I seek to face the uncomfortable depths within to better understand the breadth of sorrow and love that coexist together.

By highlighting the human form, I invite others to enter this poignant place, to reach out and shake hands with sadness and pain, love and joy. Most people think of heartbreak as the enemy, but I like to think of it as an old friend that reminds us how sincerely we are capable of loving.

Raime’s creative process 

I am constantly examining my inner world, evaluating my past and my present to identify emotions and recurring themes. Sometimes, I have a spark of an idea or wake up from a dream that inspires a series of ideas. Then, I take to drawing thumbnails, to visualize how these ideas could become figurative compositions. From those small studies, I compose reference images for my paintings.

Recent work on Raime’s #Heartlist

Zhaoming Wu

Jeremy Lipking

Nick Alm

Bo Bartlett

Jas Knight

Marjorie Hicks

Find Raime on: 

Website: https://www.raimelee.com