Arcadia, Iowa
Acrylic & encaustic painting, photography, mixed media, kinetic sculpture

Website: leeshiney.com/about Facebook: @leeshiney Instagram: @leeshiney Newsletter: Positive Space

Lee Shiney:

“Art is informed by everything. I grew up in rural Kansas. I am colorblind. I love science. I am a two-time cancer survivor. I make things.”

Lee paints large-scale iconic abstracts, and is also a photographer, kinetic sculptor, and mixed media artist, using alternative techniques that focus on positive energy, bright colors, and movement. His paintings emerge from non-traditional methods and tools he designs himself: turntables, spray devices, mechanical apparatuses that become collaborators in the work, pushing mediums past their expected limits, letting process drive discovery.

“My work reference cycles of time, illness, and the cosmos — intimate and expansive at once. And all of this has segued into what I now refer to as Positive Space: a deliberate counterpoint to darkness, using bright color and circular energy to locate and illuminate what is human and alive. My art is an ongoing experiment — curious, hands-on, and perpetually in motion.”

Over the last two decades, he has shown in 24 solo art shows and 51 group exhibitions, with roots in the Wichita and Kansas City areas and an increasingly active presence in Iowa.

Formerly a lifelong Kansan, Lee and his Iowa-raised wife, Lajean, in 2014 took a leap of faith and have been repurposing the 15,000 square foot old Ar-We-Va school building in Arcadia, Iowa, into their home and studio spaces. His next solo exhibition, Resonance, will be at Witter Gallery, Storm Lake, Iowa in 2027.