LewAllen Galleries will present Multitudes, an exhibition of new landscape paintings by Jivan Lee, from July 31 through September 12, 2026. The exhibition features a new body of work focused on the Northern New Mexico landscape, a region Lee has painted throughout his 25-year career.

Lee works in the plein air tradition, executing his paintings outdoors from direct observation. To support this practice, he uses a customized mobile studio to transport his materials into high desert and mountain terrains. His process involves working on- site for extended periods, exposing himself to changing weather patterns, including alpine winds, rain, summer heat, and dust storms. Through this physical approach, Lee captures the landscape as it changes before him, documenting momentary environmental shifts such as a rising sunrise, gathering afternoon storms, or the movement of light and shadows across mountains, ridges, and riverbanks.

The paintings in Multitudes explore time, change, and the relationship between humans and the environment. Lee’s practice treats the land as an accumulation of shifts that layer immediate, ephemeral moments over historical time. Lee’s work captures the present-day results of centuries of geological transformation — juxtaposing the permanence of a mountain ridge or a carved river valley against the fleetness of a passing shadow. His canvases function as highly specific structural records of this ongoing metamorphosis, anchoring the viewer in a singular moment where these timescales collide.

The works are created using oil paint applied with spatulas, brushes, paper towels, and his bare hands. This visceral technique results in a heavy impasto surface with a tactile, sculptural quality where gestural marks are left unblended to create a mosaic of distinct color cells. The finished canvases maintain a powerful topographical presence, shifting seamlessly between a muscular architecture of raw pigment into recognizable imagery. When viewed up close, the surfaces emphasize the raw material density of the paint, while from a distance, these marks cohere into luminous, persuasive studies of light, color, architecture, and landscape. Lee’s works hold an energy that is considered remarkable and enduring over time, enabling his paintings to possess a timelessness that cohere with the legacy of New Mexico’s landscape and history.