(Girl Band, 18×18 acrylic/mixed media by Dee McBrien-Lee)
Dee McBrien-Lee is an acrylic and mixed media artist who paints both representational and non-representational abstract works. She prefers to create organically and without intention, letting the paint and texture guide her. “My mom was a landscape painter; and she had me paint my first oil painting at the age of ten,” Dee recalls. “When my dad was a child, he used to draw his own comic strips, so I was inspired and encouraged at a very early age.”
Most recently, Dee has been focused on finding and creating figures in the work, along with exploring relationships that bind us together. Her goal is to create works that showcase moments in time throughout our everyday lives. Each figure is bound to the others in the paintings through color and shape, often becoming part of the background that surrounds them. They are without distinct faces and could be any of us. Scenes range from groups of people attending a party to girls at a coffee shop sharing the latest news.
Many pieces are inspired by actual events, such as Girl Band. This piece, along with Coffee Talk, was conceptualized during a girls’ trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2025, held in Ashland. However, Dee’s favorite pieces are generally the “discovery” paintings, which begin with pure shape and color. After several sessions, Dee will start to visualize the people who will organically inhabit the space, and the real work begins. What starts out as a mystery takes form, and the story becomes tangible.
Always evolving, this artist seeks out inspiration everywhere she goes. From the masters, such as Klimpt and Klee, to the local artists throughout the region, she can find something that will trigger a reaction, a need to create and evolve. Her favorite holidays always involve art… and Santa Fe is at the top of the list. “Santa Fe offers every type of art from Western to landscape to pure abstracts and is nothing short of magical,” Dee shared. “The amount of art and the incredible creativity that is captured in that small city is inspiring beyond anything I have ever experienced.”
In 2010 Dee was one of the original founding partners of the Red Chair Gallery, a long-time art destination in Bend. She has exhibited in numerous juried shows, including the High Desert Museum’s Art in the West. She is currently an artist member at Tumalo Art Co. in the Old Mill District and has been represented by several galleries, including Earthworks Gallery in Yachats, Oregon.
Visit Tumalo Art Co. in the Old Mill to see these and other works of Dee’s in person.