Lee W. Hughes

Born in East Orange, New Jersey, Lee W. Hughes was a gifted, sensitive young man. Lee was influenced by his grandmother, a talented artist who studied with Benjamin West and was encouraged by his mother and high school art teacher. Undiagnosed dyslexia made his school years difficult and after graduation, he enlisted in the Navy and served as a medic in the Korean War. Upon returning home, he used the GI Bill to study art at Paier School of Art in Connecticut and Boston Museum School of Art.

Today, at the age of 76, Lee has been in over 200 solo shows as well as many group shows, including one at the Smithsonian Institute. He has earned over 200 awardsin watercolor, oil and acrylic mediums. His works are in collections at the Zhejiang Museum, China, Seton Hall University, numerous corporate headquarters including the Peapack Gladstone Bank, Nabisco, Inc., and Sandoz Pharmaceuticals and extensive private collections all over the world.

Lee’s paintings are best known for his light-filled, impressionistic landscapes and flowers. His love of nature led one art critic Sarah Henry-Corrington to note, “Lee is a keen observer, and you get a sense from his paintings that he knows what dew, frost or earth feel and smell like.”

Painting en plein air, Lee’s signature painterly brushstrokes quickly record soft breezes, flickering light and the heat of the mid-day sun. The essence of time, as a fleeting and yet an ever-constant companion infuses Lee’s work. Moments are simultaneously frozen, locked into place by the prison of canvas and frame and then powerfully released by the artist’s masterful manipulation of texture, line, form and color which undulate and dance across the surface setting the scene in motion. Permanancy and the temperal is but one set of dualities that shapes Lee’s work.

Having struggled with alcoholism and depression for most of his adult life, Lee’s paintings echo his search for a balance and tranquility which seemed to elude him. Against this backdrop of the artist’s extremely interesting, yet difficult life, the exhibit Lee Hughes: A Lifetime of Art will be held at the Somerset Art Association from May 24 to June 16. An opening reception honoring the New Jersey born artist is slated for Sunday, June 3, 2007 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The reception is open to the public. This significant retrospective will examine Lee Hughes’ work from his earliest, more illustrative watercolors and paintings of central New Jersey to his most recent landscapes inspired by California where he now lives. The show will feature over 35paintings, together for the first time, with many on loan from local collections. The exhibit, “Lee Hughes: A Lifetime of Art,” is free to the public. The Somerset Art Association is located at 2020 Burnt Mills Road, Bedminster, New Jersey. For more information about the exhibit, visit the association’s web-site at www.somersetart.org.

Following the Somerset Art Association’s exhibit, the Bernardsville Public Library will be hosting “The Lee Legacy” show from June 22 through July 28 with an opening reception on June 24, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. As a gifted art instructor, Lee shared his talent with students at the Newark School of Fine Arts, local art associations and privately. This show will include a number of Lee’s works, hung with the works of his student’s over the last 30 years. The students’ works will be juried into the show by Lee’s long time friend Dr. John Cross and Kathleen Palmer, the owner of Studio 7, who represents Lee Hughes, at 5 Morristown Road, Bernardsville, New Jersey (908-630-9770).