Discover the creation in interiors
Artwork details
- Medium : Acrylic, Oil Pastel on Canvas
- Other details : Artwork on supported wooden frame. Artwork framed.
- Dimensions : 39.4x39.4in
About this artwork
This work closes the Excavation series.
After accumulation, disturbance, and erasure, the surface withdraws from image and language. Marks persist without instruction. Forms appear, then refuse to resolve.
The painting carries evidence of pressure rather than gesture. Abrasion, fracture, and residue sit quietly across the surface, suggesting that meaning has already been worked through and left behind.
The darkness here is not metaphorical. It… is practical — a field that absorbs rather than explains.
Read together, the three works in the series move from awareness, through saturation, into stillness. They do not illustrate a story. They record a process.
With this piece, Excavation is complete.
For a private collector circular email lee@leepowell.com.
After accumulation, disturbance, and erasure, the surface withdraws from image and language. Marks persist without instruction. Forms appear, then refuse to resolve.
The painting carries evidence of pressure rather than gesture. Abrasion, fracture, and residue sit quietly across the surface, suggesting that meaning has already been worked through and left behind.
The darkness here is not metaphorical. It… is practical — a field that absorbs rather than explains.
Read together, the three works in the series move from awareness, through saturation, into stillness. They do not illustrate a story. They record a process.
With this piece, Excavation is complete.
For a private collector circular email lee@leepowell.com.
Keny Lee
Australia
Credentials
- Featured in gallery curations
- Works on commission
Lee Powell is an autodidact Australian artist whose practice began with raw portraiture—early, imperfect attempts to honor the people who helped him rebuild after a personal collapse. His work evolved into large-scale abstract excavation pieces such as “Presence” and “The Excavation,” created through dozens of layered surfaces, scribed glyphs, and buried imagery. These works explore identity stripped back to its foundations: weathered, broken open, and rebuilt with deliberate power. Powell treats the canvas as archaeological ground, unearthing inverted cities, spiral staircases, and symbolic wounds to reveal the ‘source code’ beneath a man’s life. His paintings directly informed his award-winning book on men’s transformation and have positioned him as a rising voice in psychologically driven contemporary art. He also experiments with social commentary works, pushing further into themes of inner architecture, cohesion, and personal sovereignty.