Meet Lee

Lee Grest is a contemporary watercolor artist whose work reflects both her reverence for traditional styles and her spirit of experimentation in water-based media. With a focus in portraiture, her work is characterized by expressive poses and rich color palettes that celebrate elements of the subject’s personality. She works on both traditional and nontraditional surfaces, ranging from cotton paper to clay panel. Her portraits have been featured in the online publication Shoutout Colorado and have won awards, including “Best in Show” and “People’s Choice” in local art shows in the Boulder valley.

Lee describes watercolor as part strategy, part spontaneity. Her work highlights this balance in the way she blends intentional layers with freely flowing blooms. As a portrait artist, she strives to capture a likeness while also conveying a larger narrative, inviting the viewer into the subject’s layered story through candid expressions, surprising palette choices, and energetic compositions. 

Most of her work is inspired by motherhood which provides abundant reference material to explore new techniques, candid expressions, and playful palettes. In her portraits of adults, Lee expands upon the notion of portrait art as a form of storytelling. Drawing on her work as a medical-based speech-language pathologist with a clinical focus in the neurorehabilitation of those affected by brain injury and dementia, Lee explores the themes of storytelling and memory through postures, backgrounds, and patterns. In experiencing Lee’s work, the hope is for viewers to interact with the subject in some way, seeing something of themselves or of a loved one.

Raised in Texas and California, Lee now lives in Louisville, Colorado where she balances her art business with motherhood and part-time work as an SLP at Aspire Therapy and Wellness, a local company dedicated to empowering clients and clinicians alike to achieve the highest quality of care. In her free time, you will find her painting, knitting, or camping with her husband and three young sons.