Smoke Series – Near Us

Near Us is a six-work gouache-on-canvas extension of the Smoke series outside printmaking and animation altogether. Gouache is an opaque water-based paint that sits on the surface of the canvas without sinking, producing a matte, slightly chalky finish that approximates the visual register of charcoal more closely than oil or acrylic. The set of six gives the smoke subject a static, painted condition: rather than dispersing across one hundred or one hundred and twenty animated frames, the same atmospheric mass is held still on each canvas. The title — Near Us — sits the subject in the viewer's immediate vicinity, an emphasis consistent with Lee's interest in smoke as a metaphor for proximate but uncontainable events. Within her body of work the painted Smoke pieces function as a counterweight to the animation suites: they ask what remains when the moving printed image is stilled and translated into a single, durable surface.