Quick Facts
Biography
Reginald K (Kevin) Gee (April 28, 1964) is a contemporary artist who for over 25 years has created hundreds of paintings, including the brown paper bag series (1995-2002). Gee broke into the art world at an outdoor exhibition in 1986 at Milwaukee’s Performing Arts Center, now known as the Marcus Center. In 2013, the David Barnett Gallery held a 25-year retrospective of Gee's paintings.
Early life
Reginald K Gee was born in Wisconsin in 1964 and is of African and Native-American descent. Gee is the youngest of three siblings. Gee’s parents were from Mississippi, where his mother’s family worked as sharecroppers. Gee’s father, Hamilton R. Gee, was a World War II veteran who came to Milwaukee in the 1950s to work for International Harvester. Gee’s mother, Ethel L. Gardner-Gee, worked most of her life for American Motors Corporation.
Art Career
Gee’s professional art debut occurred February 1988 during an exhibition at the Dean Jensen Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has referred to Gee as a "budding genius ... an artistic wunderkind," who produces "stunning, complex visions" and describes his art as “tribal art-derived from Pop Culture and art magazines”. "The work looks like, and is perhaps more authentic than, the garden variety of funky imagery...Gee's pictures are full of undigested cultural and psychological fragments that float together in surprisingly engaging ways."
Gee's subject matter includes jazz musicians, surreal landscapes, seascapes, romance, fantasy and social commentary. During the early 1990s, Gee’s art was shown at the Baltimore Folk & Visionary Art Show, the New York Outsider Art Fair and the National Black Fine Art Show at the Puck Building in New York City. In 2002, two of Gee’s paintings, “The Honest Crowd” and “Inspiration” were selected for the 2002 Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition, “In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” Another Gee painting, “Nationwide Tobacco Ban, © 1998,” was chosen for a campaign against smoking sponsored by the American Lung Association.
In an August 11, 1999 interview with the Milwaukee Journal’s art critic, James Auer, “The Visual Arts, “Artist listens to his life’s calling,” Gee speaks about his occasional anxiety attacks since childhood and the spiritual prophecy that had him move to San Francisco, start a ministry among the homeless and pursue the art career he started in Milwaukee. Upscale Magazine featured Gee in its April 2010 issue, “A Man Apart. Reginald Gee Draws Inspiration From The Human Experience.”