Mr. Lewis was born and raised in Virginia but his fine art career began after moving to Arizona in the 1990s. He has also lived in Wales, New York, Maine and Namibia but for the last two decades, he has called Oregon home, where he continues to obsess over the real vs. the imagined and the sense of mystery in ordinary places.
Statement
My most recent body of work draws on sketches of real places from my journals and reinterprets them as night scenes using dramatic lighting, often glowing from somewhere in the foreground as if the light is shining directly from the viewer’s gaze. The light transforms the tableau into a kind of stage set, suggesting the tension of something imminent, a mystery to be explored.
I grew up fascinated by myths, folktales and ghost stories. Later I fell in love with the natural sciences. Both have one thing in common. They prompt us to think about the world in new and surprising ways. Whether I’m pursuing true stories or tall tales, my work tries to convey both the wonder and the disquieting uncanniness inherent in everything around us