Jivan Lee is featured in Western Art Collector ahead of his exhibition Upwelling at Altamira Fine Art, exploring his plein-air process, New Mexico landscapes, and expressive use of oil paint.
Jivan Lee is featured in the October 2026 issue of Western Art Collector in “Direct Observation,” an in-depth profile written by John O’Hern with photography by Jason Williams.
The feature follows Lee into the Northern New Mexico landscape as he works toward Upwelling, his new exhibition at Altamira Fine Art in Jackson Hole. Painting directly from the landscape, Lee is less interested in documenting a fixed view than in capturing the physical experience of being there: the shifting light, approaching weather, wind, temperature and the sensation of a place changing in real time.
That immediacy carries into the paintings themselves. Lee works with substantial amounts of oil paint, building surfaces that become almost topographical. In the article, he describes paint as a material capable of retaining the physical and emotional gestures of the painting process. Storm systems, clouds and desert vegetation are translated through color, line and thick passages of paint rather than rendered as straightforward representations.
The article also traces an important thread in Lee’s practice: his background in biology and environmental policy. Before committing fully to painting, Lee worked in sustainable communities and regenerative agriculture. That history continues to inform the way he approaches landscape as an interconnected, changing system experienced through the body.
For Upwelling, Lee pushes that language further. Dark outlines, heightened color and increasingly assertive mark-making move the paintings beyond traditional plein-air observation. As Lee explains in the feature, he is ultimately “not painting reality” but making a painting by allowing line, paint and instinct to transform what he encounters in the field.
The result is a body of work grounded in direct observation but driven by something more subjective: memory, sensation and the internal response to being immersed in the Western landscape.
Jivan Lee: Upwelling
Artist Reception : October 16th, 5-7 pm
Altamira Fine Art
172 Center Street, Suite 100
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Read the full feature in the October 2026 issue of Western Art Collector and explore the new work from Upwelling at Altamira Fine Art.
