Lee Albion
galbion@gte.net
Lee Smith Albion, born in New York, lived much of her life in the Manhattan area. Before university she trained at the Grand Central School of Art in N.Y.C. She then went on to receive a B.S. degree in Art Theory at Harvard-Radcliffe College and her Master's Degree at Columbia University. She then spent four years at the prestigious Art Students League in N.Y.C., working there extensively with Frank Reilly. Thereafter, she studied at the Art Center in Los Angeles, CA, at the Hilton Leech Studio in Sarasota, FL., and with Mario Cooper, former president of the American Watercolor Society.
 
Her commercial art career led her to draw for leading magazines and newspapers in the U.S. such as The New Yorker, Gourmet, Saturday Review of Literature, New York Times Book Review, and many others. For a number of years she exclusively illustrated the weekly Chicago Tribune Book Review. She also illustrated numerous children’s books for John Day, J.B. Lippincott, Putnams, Scholastic Books, and others. A complete list and further biographical material can be found in the Horn Book's Illustrators of Children's Books. The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection, North America's leading resource in the field of childrens' literature, has a substantial collection of her illustrations in that genre.
 
A good collection of her commercial work is to be found in Harvard University's Film Archives.
 
Subsequently she moved to London, England, where she set up her studio and resided for 21 years devoting herself to Fine Arts. There her paintings - oils, watercolors, and pastels - were exhibited by:
 
        The Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI)
        The Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI)
        The Society of Botanical Artists
        The New England Art Club
        The Pastel Society
        The Royal Watercolour Society (RWS)
 
The principal galleries in London exhibiting her work were:
 
        The Mall Gallery
        Bankside Gallery
        English Speaking Union
       
Mrs. Albion won a number of awards and prizes while exhibiting in England, the most prestigious being the Stanley Grimm Award for oils, awarded once a year by the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil and presented at a ceremony by the Duchess of Kent.
       
She relocated to Florida in 1994 where she is a member of:
 
                The Florida Watercolor Society
                The Tarpon Springs Art Association
                The Beach Art Association of Indian Rocks Beach
                The Art Center of St. Petersburg
                The Georgia Watercolor Society
                Florida Suncoast Watercolor Society
 
In addition to numerous local shows, she has shown in:
 
                The Florida Watercolor Society Annual Show
                The Grand National - Mississippi Watercolor Society
                Uncharted Water - The Art Center in St. Petersburg
                Women Contemporary Artists - Sarasota
                Hilton Leech Galleries - Sarasota
                Four Arts Society - Palm Beach
                Lowe Gallery - Miami
                Bacardi Gallery - Miami
                Sarasota Art Association - Sarasota
                Princeton Gallery - Princeton, N.J.
                North Haven - Maine.
 
She is represented by:
 
                The Art Center - St.       Petersburg
                Art at the Plaza – Belleair Bluffs
 
Lee had a one woman show July 2007 at the Oldsmar City Hall Gallery. She will be having another one woman show at the Octagon in February 2008.
 
She recently won First Prize at the Oct-Nov Beach Art Center Show, and Honorable Mention and Merit Awards at Suncoast.