Mother’s Pietà (Detail), 48” x 36”, charcoal and graphite, 2021
Lee Nowell-Wilson
Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk
May 23 - July 17, 2021
About the Exhibition
Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk is an autobiographical inquiry into the ambivalent undertones felt within birth, domestic labor, and human relationship. Through combining the use of mundane household items and figural configurations that reference historical, religious compositions, Nowell-Wilson unweaves a tension felt between the “plainness” of home-life and the required discipline, sacrifice, and tenacity within care-giving. As each household item starts to create form and become a secondary figure in-and-of-itself, Nowell-Wilson examines a tipping point — the line where the maternalistic state of being tips from something sensitive to aggressive, from a tearing tension to close connection — and she invites her viewer into that vulnerable walk. While also combining high realism, abstract marks, and empty contours, Nowell-Wilson speaks metaphorically to elements of weight, physicality, mental health, and veneration; each piece is made in the effort to humorously cry about the growing pains of having children while also examining it as something holy.
Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk presents two new, large-scale drawings from Lee Nowell-Wilson, along with a floor installation that features the third issue of MILKED, an independent arts publication created by Nowell-Wilson along with Darin Michelle Gilliam.
About the Artist
Lee Nowell-Wilson (b. 1989, Easton, MD) is an American figurative artist who builds autobiographical drawings that investigate the emotional and ambivalent undertones within birth, domestic labor, and human relationship. Nowell-Wilson earned her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011. She has participated in artist residencies with Stay Home Gallery in Paris, TN, Creative Paradox in Annapolis, MD, and the Street Art School in Lyon, France. Her work has exhibited nationally and internationally, most notably in New York City and Scotland, and she has also completed urban art pieces in Norway, France, Northern Ireland, and Chile. In 2019, she founded MILKED, a new arts publication featuring visual art, photography, and the written word by female artists investigating the maternal figure and form. Within the last year, her own work has featured in the second issue of Our Rhythms Our Blues online zine, Stay Home Gallery’s first publication, and “Home-works”, a printed zine by Spilt Milk Gallery about artist-mothers in Quarantine. Other notable achievements include speaking on an artist panel hosted by Hamiltonian Gallery, D.C, about the “Maternal Creative Instinct”, being interviewed on the Artist/Mother Podcast, and receiving a Creativity Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council. Nowell-Wilson currently lives and works in Baltimore, MD.
