PAINTING CAREER

Professional painter, Claudette Lee-Roseland began her artistic life with drawing lessons from a local painter before she went to kindergarten. Her interest in art was fueled early on with trips to the Chicago Art Institute and paintings hung in her home which she attempted to copy as a child. Art awards in grade school and high school followed. In college, she studied with Lester Schwartz, a well respected Wisconsin artist of the time. Following graduation, she became an educator who added artistic events into her social studies curriculum whenever possible while perusing painting on a personal level.

Her artistic life soared after taking a job with a local art materials store where she developed an art educational program that related to the products sold in the store. As instructor of the classes, she broadened her knowledge of materials and how to use them to create. During this time, she maintained a studio in the “Pittsburg Building”-now known as the Arts Building in downtown Milwaukee. Participating in the annual Studio Crawl, many of her paintings found homes. At this time, she developed a line of painted tiles that were sold at the Milwaukee Art Museum and numerous retail locations around the country. Today, these are sold out of her studio in Cedarburg and on the internet at www.etsy.com.

Over the years, she has participated in art fairs, one-man shows and group shows. Her work has not gone unnoticed. Over ten paintings in the Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company collection, part of the Serigraph collection, found in the collection of numerous companies and private collections, she is a sought after instructor and private art coach. Claudette has given back to the arts community by serving on the Boards of Wisconsin Visual Artists, Wisconsin Designer Craft Council and Cedarburg Artists’ Guild. She is a Signature Member of the International Acrylic Painters Association and an Associate Member of Oil Painters of America. In addition, she produces unique copper and silver jewelry and writes a bi-monthly column for the local newspaper on arts events.

A Master’s Degree in Learning Disabilities has contributed to her ability to teach beginners in art as well as experiment with art techniques that make her work individual. She currently teaches at the Cedarburg Cultural Center and Peninsula Art School in Door County, WI. Loving puzzles and mysteries, she creates paintings that provide the viewer an opportunity to interpret the work with their own meaning. She creates interesting “layers of thought” with each application of paint, working back and forth between transparent and opaque colors, adding lines here and there that disappear and reappear between shapes, creating mystery between what you see and what you don’t see under the paint. Investigation, experimentation and color provide the fun for her with her work. During the summer, she works in Plein Air-outside to capture the light as it moves across the Wisconsin landscape. She is a three-time prize winner in the Cedarburg Plein Air Painting Competition.

Paintings can be seen at www.leeabstracts.blogspot.com, www.cleearts.blogspot.com. www.leeminiatures.blogspot.com, www.artfromthetrail.blogspot.com, www.artfromthegarden.blogspot.com and www.artwisconsin.blogspot.com. Tiles can be seen at www.leetiles.com and www.etsy.com. Paintings may be seen by appointment at Center Street Studio in Cedarburg and the North Shore Academy of the Art’s Arts Building in Grafton where she maintains a studio. She is a member of the NSAA Co-OP Gallery. Contact Claudette at [email protected] or 262-375-6030.

She lives a creative life.