Lee Alban has been painting in the style of realism since he put crayon to paper. He recalls an elementary school teacher tasking the class to draw four trees. Alban was so consumed with the details he was chastised the next day for only completing one—but his was not the lollipop tree and cotton ball cloud drawings the other kids had made. The drive to work on a piece until it’s exactly right is a necessary trait for a successful painter of realism and is the foundation of Alban’s ethos of “no compromises.”
The Searchers, oil on panel, 24 x 30”
When Alban retired from his career as a middle school science teacher at age 52, he could finally turn his full attention to becoming a professional artist. While studying at Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore, he developed a proficiency across many genres of painting. While this came in handy later when teaching art, he found it a hindrance when it came to his own career because, as he puts it, “galleries tend not to want a generalist.”
Two Cookie Buy In, oil on panel, 18 x 24”
Alban received the Editor Choice Award from our sister publication American Art Collector at the 16th annual International Guild of Realism Exhibition for a floral called White Lilies. But Alban is likely best known for his Women of Steam and Silk and Steel series which have a 1940s aesthetic and depict women at work on heavy machinery and mechanical equipment. Recent work in this vein was inspired by a group of Minnesota women who restore antique steam-powered tractors and who Alban traveled to photograph.
These days, Alban is steadily focused on his Western art which, he says, has had a following for a decade. After Alban’s paintings of vintage trains and diners were featured in American Art Collector, he was asked to participate in a “traveling the West” themed show in Dallas. Wanting to add more western elements to his compositions, he tried to place imagery from turn-of-the-century photographs in his compositions but nothing quite fit. That’s when he came up with the idea to superimpose Trompe l’Oeil renditions of the photographs over his full color Western landscapes, made to look as if they are taped on the surface.
“These people are gone,” Alban says of the Native Americans who appear in many of the photos. “But placing them in these landscapes is a way of restoring them to the territory that they once occupied or could very well have. You can imagine them being there.” The title of each piece in the series references a Native American saying.
Lucky at Love, Unlucky at Cards, oil on panel, 18 x 24”
Some of his most recent work originated from a four-day photo shoot on a Kansas ranch outfitted like a Western movie set and replete with a cast of actors that stage desired scenarios. Alban says he doesn’t usually do “cute” but he found the children playing poker with cookie “chips” irresistible and decided to tackle capturing all of its challenging details. The Searchers is another of his favorites that originated in the same shoot.
It wasn’t until recently that Alban pinpointed the connection between the different genres he has moved between over the course of his trajectory as a painter. “I realized there must be a part of me that is nostalgic for the past,” Alban says. When he was learning to paint still lifes, he practiced on vintage toys. When a Texas gallery commissioned a piece from him, he chose to portray the early days of the oil industry. If he was going to paint a train, he’d choose a steam-powered one.
Dreams are Wiser than Men, oil on panel, 18 x 24”“In my childhood we watched old cowboy movies and grew up in a different era. I think a lot of us are more interested in things that aren’t around anymore than what we see every day. They’re gone now but maybe we can restore them to some degree in paintings.” —
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