Lee Welch is an artist working with painting, collage, drawing, print and installation. He is best known for his paintings in which figures, objects and their environments are stripped back to their most essential details: semi-abstract forms that are suggestive of a wider narrative. Often based on existing images, the works make allusions to the history of art, architecture, literature and cinema, and as well as to Welch’s personal photographs – but these reference points are always abstracted, distilled, removed and recast in the artist’s distinct aesthetic universe. Figures might appear in domestic settings, or taking part in leisure activities, kindling a sense of familiarity with the viewer – and yet their flattened details and textures also keep them at a distance from us. This tension between intimacy and restraint is continued in Welch’s handling of materials, which is spare but sensuous: single layers of paint leave a gauzy finish, while unpainted sections reveal strips of bare canvas or tactile fabric. Produced quickly but with delicacy, the paintings often use a softened palette of pastel and earth tones. The artist talks of the paintings waiting ‘mutely – patiently – for the viewer to animate them’ – an animation that takes place upon entry into the viewer’s imagination, where it might spark recollections of images embedded deep in the psyche, connections with a rich array of cultural touchstones, or unlock abstract and hard-to-reach emotions. Lee Welch completed an MFA at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and gained his BFA from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. He is the NCAD Studio Artist for 2020-21 and was recently awarded a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Welch’s work has been featured in numerous institutions including Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), León, Spain and Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp. His paintings are in private and public collections such as the Arts Council, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane and the OPW - State Art Collection.