Designs and Products for the Giftware Industry

I have many years experience designing, manufacturing and marketing for the giftware industry.

From the beginning of market research in the giftware industry comes the concept and the original designs from designers. Then the necessary changes in the designs depend on so many other factors and different contexts – politics, fashion trends, product costs, profit margins, changes in the targeted market niches, changes to simplify, changes to make more complex.

It is this experience of working creatively across contexts, addressing different demands and perspectives and shifting attention to address changing needs and interests that has deeply influenced my ideas and my overall approach to painting.

Thus, my paintings are not limited by traditional genres, such as portraiture, still life, landscape, interiors. Instead, I am interested in complex and opulent presentations of objects that confound generic categories. I revel in the play of complexities and ambiguities of forms and meanings.

In short, I seek to create works that may inspire the viewer to imagine diverse ways of contemplating the relationship between different kinds of experiences and different orientations to reality.

Lee Graves Projects