In September 2021, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art featured Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee.  This was an incredible exhibition that debuted in Greensburg, PA and then traveled around the United States.  What it provided for me was the surprising discovery of Doris Lee's range.  I had mostly associated her with the Depression-era, folksy paintings and cartoons that provided a visual reprieve for those experiencing the hardships of an overwhelmed economy.  But what I found was an artist who could float among impressionism, abstraction and realism in a palette of color and line that was on par with the very best artists of her period.  Hers was an indelible career finally recognized in a survey that honored a truly gifted artist. 
 
One of Lee's breakthrough works was a 1935 painting called Thanksgiving.  Eventually purchased by the Chicago Institute of Art where is still remains, it offers a "bustling scene of women preparing a Thanksgiving feast debuted in the midst of the Great Depression, a time when the themes of a national holiday, rural customs, and family life appealed to struggling Americans."  The painting offered here was likely completed around the same time, and though not of the same level of detail or mastery, it does provide a similar energy in its depiction of a colorful life "en plein air", a truly Simple Pleasure.
 
But before you purchase this painting, please visit the Westmoreland Museum of Art and see Lee's Oranges and Avocados.  This painting is nothing like that one.  At least not at first.  Look.  And look.  Then tell me how you find Oranges and Avocados in this painting, in the color, in the brush marks, in the way she frames your seeing.  That is the best way to know if this painting should belong to you.  If you see how Lee goes from Woodstock Landscape to Oranges and Avocados, this is a painting for you.