Jane Lee is an artist and illustrator who is currently attending Art Center in Pasadena. We got a note from her a few days ago sharing her work, hoping to throw her take on things into the mix and add to the rich (and growing) group of talented folks we’ve shared from her school. As you can tell, the work from Art Center’s students are as varied as the disciplines they teach (and collide together).

Lee’s work concentrates on plants and the green that surrounds us. She represents them in drawings and paintings even bringing them to three dimensions with paper goods and in zines. She certainly is not limited to just plants as her portraits show but she has a fascination and love for plants that has become the basis for her current artistic pursuits. “I make paintings under the name Plant Life, and my work consists of representations and abstractions of nature,” she notes in her e-mail. “I work off of various spatial relationships and juxtapositions of plant growths and existing architecture, whether they are in gardens, parks, or off of streets. I am obsessed with the organic way that different plants form, and the colors and shapes they have. I work with acrylic, oil and gouache paints on paper and panels. I also make sculptures of plants out of cardboard.”

What we like about Lee’s work is that she smashes all that she sees in these impressionistic views of wildlife that evoke that of a swamp or a flowery canopy or an overwhelming flora and fauna wall. Her works are abstract but literal, painterly while expressionistic. There are a lot of gestures and moods placed into these paintings to share these forms and characters in (Southern California) nature. The fluidity of it all is quite beautiful.

Lee, like a lot of the Art Center students and alumni we’ve shared, is striving to stay diverse and do whatever she can to extend her artistic voice. You can see more of her work on her website and catch what she’s up to .