What drew you to the medium of watercolor as your primary artistic expression?
I became interested in watercolor art in the mid-1970s, when renowned artist Robert Shepherd moved to St. George from California and began painting in watercolor, predominately landscapes. He became my mentor, and I was impressed with his artwork. He was doing landscapes and watercolor, so I started doing landscapes and watercolor. When he died, I inherited his famous painting easel. It meant so much to me, that of all his students, he would gift his easel to me upon his death.
How did you start painting?
Ever since I was a child I could draw. My kindergarten teacher wrote my mom a note saying, "He’s really good at art,” and I became the class artist. My friends wanted me to draw pictures of dinosaurs, rocket ships, airplanes and army men. When I went to college, I had never been to an art gallery, so I didn’t know about the fine arts. All I knew were the covers of Outdoor Life, Motor Trend and other car magazine covers. I wanted to become an illustrator. I went to Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo and studied to be an illustrator. One of my teachers at BYU said I was a good designer, so both design and art became my focus. After BYU, I returned to California to work for some ad agencies. After our first child was born, my wife Nelly and I returned to Utah to be near Zion National Park.
After we arrived, I did commercial work, designing logos and advertisements. Everything was hand inked, and all the production was done by hand. This work rapidly grew into a full-service ad agency. Shortly after, I met my mentor Robert Shepherd and started painting.
How did you refine your natural talent of taking what you see visually, in your mind’s eye, and have the movement of your hands to interpret it into an image?
Years and years of practice. I have been painting for over 50 years. When I am teaching people “how to see,” I focus on the ability to practice looking at values or shapes as light and dark.
Watercolor painting is transparent, so a light area must have dark around it to make an image. In nature, the human eye goes to the lightest light against the darkest dark. In landscape painting, I am interested in capturing the foreground, middle ground, distance in the sky and overlapping shapes, working my way back in space.
Do you consider yourself a naturalist?
In some ways, yes. In other words, the natural world is important to me. I served for 12 years on the board of the Zion Natural History Association, now known as the Zion Forever Project. I have served as artist in residence at Zion, Mesa Verde, Bryce, Capitol Reef and other parks.
What do you look for when you are teaching plein air (outdoor) painting?
I am trying to teach people how to see the way our artistic brain sees things. We don’t know it intuitively because we want to rely on our intellectual brain, which is great for calculus, but doesn’t have as much art brain. Art is really a matter of seeing edges based on lights and darks and the shapes that are created by those edges, and then we duplicate on paper or canvas the value of those edges. When we can do that, the image looks real. It’s quite remarkable!
I recently found your Roland Lee YouTube channel and was totally surprised by the number of FREE hour-long instructional teaching videos you have on your site. What inspired you to offer these videos free of charge?
These past three years, I have been teaching and speaking more as a way of giving back.
What legacy do you want to leave with your art?
I give thanks to God and to the people who support me—people who purchase art! I love the land; I love nature. God has given us a beautiful place to live. Appreciate the land. Appreciate what you see.