JAMES LEE CHIAHAN

Nothing swims easy
Oil on wood panel, 18x24"

Everything swims easy
Oil on panel, 24x36", 2025

TREE

1. Cloud no.5 (sunbather)
2. Cloud no.4 (big wink)
3. Cloud no.3 (lint)

About twenty smaller studies and experiments will be available for purchase online this Sunday, including these guys. Stay posted at jlee.ca/mailing_list ⛅

James with Paintings and Newspapers
by Andrew James Mckay
Acrylic with graphite and ink on panel. 2023.
Photo by Rachel Topham Photography

Andrew in Good Health
Oil on wood panel, 16 x 20 in
2023

James:
In 2023, my e-bud @andrewjamesmckay reached out about his forthcoming project, Tête-à-Tête. He explained that he would set out to paint about ten different artists, and they would all paint him. The thought of a space filled with portraits of him and him also being present was very funny to me and also very powerful of him. I couldn’t say no. For working reference, Andrew sent me a photo of him post-optometrist visit, pupils gaping, letting way too much of the world in. I loved learning from this painting and from talking with Andrew, but most of all, I love the painting(s) he’s made of me.

Andrew:
In an effort to mitigate the basic ego-maniacal nature of the project, I was interested in also painting the artists who would be doing my portrait(s). Do artists have a special acuity in terms of sight? What impositions or inferences would each include in their portraits of me (and vice versa)? Would it—as James alludes to—look totally mad having them all together at once, all shouting the same image in a variety of dialects? One thinks of the hundreds upon hundreds of portraits of Nicolae Ceaușescu, former Prime Minister of Romania. Despite now being generally unexhibitable owing to his late-rule conduct, they show him in innumerable circumstances and getting up to all kinds of wonderful things; apparently he hated all of them. As for me, I like James and I like the painting he did of me. I think he made something substantial out of what was a disorientating day for me, and it was a pleasure to be able to interpret him in his studio space to say nothing of this venture having provided an opportunity to have a colleague become a friend.

montreal balcony no.3
6 x 9 in
oil on yupo

one day i hope to also have a room like this neighbour’s

park sunset over birthday party aftermath
5 x 7 in, oil on yupo
2024

montreal balcony no.2
5 x 7 in, oil on yupo
2024

montreal balcony no.1
3.5 x 5 in
oil on yupo

A Warm Evening, Like Many Others
9x62ft
Assisted by Kaori Izumiya
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This very very long wall sits in the Davies office on the 27th floor at 1501 McGill and was created to live alongside their private art collection, curated by the wonderful Florence-Agathe Dubé-Moreau

All my gratitude to the great folks at MU and Davies for making this possible and to Kaori Izumiya for also making this possible with her mega skills in painting and joking around.

Wobble
Oil on wood panel
48 x 60in
2024

Working from a photo taken by my late father, I painted a moment from an epic banquet dinner we had together with his old friends, their wives, and their daughters. Through painting, through his eyes, I face grief and the memory of a difficult and regretful time. I spend time with him again in a sideways way.

The act of mining nostalgia and personal history is a destructive one. Missing pieces come into frustrating focus, inaccuracies congeal, and old feelings take new shapes. We can find illumination and healing through contemplation, but by re-experiencing the past, its original colour is altered forever.

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I’m proud to share this painting and a few others with the support of Gallery PFOAC at Art Toronto, in the Metro Toronto Convention Center October 25th to 27th. We’ll be at booth A38. See ya!

Swimmer
7 x 9 in, Oil on paper
2024

lachine canal (plein air)
oil on panel, 7.5 x 8 in, 2024
available

with my doggy 🌼💠🌸

michael lista for @thewalrus

oil on yupo, 8 x 11 in, 2024

400 CAD