Don Lee was born one wintry Wisconsin afternoon in February of 1952. While official weather records have either been lost or destroyed, one can certainly envision a perilous snowstorm, northern Wisconsin being what it is. Don’s early and rather tiny infant years were fraught with potential peril, so it was to his benefit that he opted to remain under the care and tutelage of his parents. In 1956 those very same parents decided to cast their lot with the Golden State and so they headed out west, taking the highway that’s the best, Route Six Six. The Pacific Ocean put an abrupt halt to all things highway and migratory so the Lee family of four settled in Los Angeles, where the sand meets the sea. Don’s entire elementary, middle and high school years were spent at Chadwick School on the once rural but ever more populated Palos Verdes Peninsula. Upon graduation, sensing the impending implosion of the California dream, he moved to the Pacific Northwest. There he began a steady and apparently life-long adaptation to oft-gray skies and a state of near permanent effusion of some form of moisture. Don completed four very interesting years at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma about the same time Richard Nixon was completing five very interesting years in that ‘other Washington’ to the east.

Initially self-taught, Don began his art career as a quick sketch portrait artist at a host of small events and shows. Those flea markets, fairs and malls were heavily populated with once anti-capitalistic 60's refugees making a 70's capitalistic go of it. It was a strange and tenuous time. For years he honed his skills drawing literally thousands of people in a variety of unsatisfactory and demanding conditions. Over the next 25 years Don exhibited, showed and demonstrated in nearly all of the Northwest's major art shows, venues and events.

After the most recent turn of the century, dissatisfied with the artistic limitations of hurriedly done art, Don realized that he didn't necessarily know everything. He attended Gage Academy in Seattle studying with such luminaries as Anthony Ryder, Geoffrey Laurence and Juliette Aristides. This, coupled with exposure to a variety of new ideas via membership in the Portrait Society of America, Don began to see more richly while developing an awareness of the historical place and significance of fine art portraiture. Given his thirty years prior experience, the result has been an almost exponential expansion of his artistic skills.

A veteran of hundreds of portrait originals for private and corporate clients around the country, Don has also completed numerous aviation art commissions for aircraft owners, military personnel and those associated with the airlines.

Always intrigued by the rich variety of people he encounters, he mightily enjoys the fact that he can touch people on a personal level doing something he is able and loves to do. With a healthy reverence for the masters and artistic traditions of the past, it is Don's intention to balance realistic representation while still evoking an emotional response. The creation of art, initially a skill, has grown into a profound joy eventuating in service. And so it is always Don's intention to touch, honor and dignify.