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Born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1984, Ricky Lee Gordon is an artist and curator with a studio practice that sees him create natural landscapes on canvas using pigments and dyes found only in nature, a deeply personal process he likens to meditation for the manner in which it illuminates the interconnectedness of all life. Working under the aegis of painting nature with nature, he explores a variety of mediums, seeking harmony through the alchemy of materials and form in processes that include oxidizing plant dyes, batik printing with beeswax, cyanotypes, lithographs, copper and acid engraving, wood carving and brass casting.

In his public practice, Lee Gordon is known as one of “street art’s 11 greats”(National Geographic) for his large-scale artworks bringing to light social and environmental issues with commissions for organisations such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and the United Nations, for which he recently created his largest work to date, in Downtown Houston, Texas, a 40 x 30 meter mural drawing attention to the state of the oceans. Having moved to Cape Town in his twenties and founded A WORD OF ART Gallery, the Colour Ikamva school rejuvenation project and the Andpeople advertising agency, Lee Gordon went on to live in Los Angeles in 2015 where he studied anatomy, classical drawing and painting at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art. With the ocean remaining an ever-present source of inspiration, Lee Gordon is now based between the Śūnyatā artist residencies he founded in Sri Lanka and Bali, Indonesia.

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Śūnyatā Studios: Munggu Bali / Nilwella Sri Lanka