Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Chatting with the international artist next door

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1998 | 11:33 a.m.

Meet Annie Lee. She's a 63-year-old painter, a black woman in a line of endeavor run largely by white men. She is a modest 63-year-old painter -- "It's a blessing for people to even be interested," she says of her art -- although she doesn't take her work lightly. She is, judging by her spacious Green Valley home, a successful 63-year-old painter. She is the embodiment of the notion that it's surprising, the people who live in our midst without our knowing it.

If you know anything about black art, you may have seen her paintings, or prints of them. If you watch TV, maybe you've noticed her work in the home of "ER's" Dr. Cooper. You like movies? Her paintings were in Eddie Murphy's "Coming to America" and "Boomerang." Been to Will Smith's place lately? He owns her painting "Daily Snooze." Or maybe you've seen the porcelain figurines modeled on her work. Or the tiles. Or the calendars. Or the jigsaw puzzles. (But if you've seen the throw pillows, T-shirts or refrigerator magnets, don't buy -- those images were pirated, and it's Lee's fervent wish to sue the ever-lovin' pants off the people responsible.)

I, of course, didn't know any of that, had never, in fact, heard of Lee, until I received the mailer for her upcoming exhibit at the Charleston Heights Arts Center. I was struck by the artwork; once again, I was surprised by the people who live in our midst without our knowing it.

So I met Annie Lee. Having moved here a year ago from Chicago, she lives in a posh-ish neighborhood of Green Valley, in a house she had vetted by a feng shui expert (that's why the fountain out front faces the house instead of the street; in feng shui, water equals money, and you want to be careful which way it flows). The walls are packed with artwork, mostly from black artists. "This is how I spend my money," Lee says.

And this is how she makes it: colorful, folk-art-style paintings of everyday black life. Some examples: In "Spin Cycle," a mother lugs clothing at the laundromat while her kids climb on everything. There's a hot card game happening in "Al Ain't Here." In the melancholy "Blue Monday," a woman sits forlornly on the edge of her bed. She sells some in her Chicago gallery, Annie Lee and Friends, many more around the world. "I sell to 2,000 galleries," she says matter-of-factly.

Lee hasn't spent all her time in fancy suburban tract homes. She's paid dues. As a child, she lived in a basement apartment in Chicago, later passing up a four-year scholarship to Northwestern University in favor of marriage. She worked 10 years as a railroad clerk, a job she disliked. At 40, she finally went to college, then painstakingly put herself through eight years of night school to earn a masters in education. Although her life has been marred by tragedy -- two husbands lost to cancer, a son killed in a car wreck, enough loved ones gone now for her to say, "I've got angels everywhere" -- her paintings remain unburdened by gloom. "I figure people are depressed enough," she says. "I'll try to pull a smile out of you."

Here's an odd thing about Annie Lee: Painting is both good for her and hazardous to her health. "It's therapy," she says. But get this: She's allergic to the paint! It started getting to her about four years ago. A little while back, pushing hard to finish enough work for simultaneous shows here and in Chicago, she breathed in too much and ended up at the emergency room with respiratory problems.

Did you ever consider, you know, not painting? "The doctor suggested it," she says, chuckling. But she can't stop. It's what she does, what she has to do. "I've got six employees in Chicago that have to be paid, every week," she says. So she paints in a small courtyard just out her back door, accompanied by the soothing burble of fountains and a tiny pond (water equals money!). "The paint doesn't bother me when I'm out in the air," she says.

Sitting at her kitchen table, Lee pushes forward a sheaf of sketches torn from a small spiral pad. The drawings dance and jump with energy, and not simply because they depict people dancing and jumping energetically. There is a kinetic quality to them. These are prelims for an ad she is illustrating for the Legg's company -- you know, the panty hose people. Normally, Lee doesn't accept commissions, preferring to paint what she wants. "But I couldn't turn this down," Lee says. The ad'll be in Cosmo -- all the big magazines!

Other pages in the sketchbook show works beginning to form: images set in a beauty shop, at a fingernail station, on a fishing pier. Lee isn't the first coming of black art in Las Vegas, of course; Harold Bradford, among others, has been working for years to add a little color to the local arts scene. But every new voice helps.

Lee acknowledges she could broaden her appeal and up her cash flow by painting white subjects. "An art dealer suggested it," she says. "But how can I paint white? I do what I know."

She says she won't open a gallery here, although she insists it's time the city had a high-profile black gallery. She talks about maybe organizing a big fair of black artists, although it's hard to know when she'd have the time. She just returned from a print-signing trip to Detroit, Philly and Connecticut. "I've got to get ready for my show here," she says, "then I'm gone to Chicago." She sighs, leans back in her chair. "I want to slow down next year," she says. Maybe put together a coffee-table book of her work, design some dolls. These 63-year bones have enough miles on 'em for now.

Then she grins. "But it's an enjoyable life," she says.