Artist Statement: The Canvas as Courtroom

As a Miami-based artist and self-described “revisionist historian,” I use my art to challenge, document, and illuminate the truths often left out of history. My work is a tribute to resilience, remembrance, and the relentless pursuit of justice.

Art is not decoration. Art is documentation.

In a world where history is often sanitized, whitewashed, or forgotten entirely, the artist becomes the keeper of uncomfortable truths. I am Nard Lee, and I embrace the title of “revisionist historian”—not because I distort truth, but because I refuse to let it be buried.

The Canvas as Courtroom
Every brushstroke is testimony. Every color choice is evidence. When I blend canvas with acrylic, chalk, paper, and oil pastels, I am not simply creating—I am excavating. I am pulling forward the voices that were silenced, the stories that were deemed inconvenient, the realities that power structures hoped would fade with time.

My paintings are time portals, yes, but they are also mirrors. They reflect the fear, turmoil, discrimination, and anguish of the 1970s and 1980s because these emotions did not die with those decades. They live, they breathe, they demand recognition in our contemporary moment.

Beauty in Truth, Power in Remembrance
There is profound beauty in bearing witness. When I paint the indomitable spirits of the past, I am not romanticizing struggle—I am honoring resilience. Each piece becomes a monument to those who fought, who resisted, who refused to be erased.

Art has always been political. The question is not whether we engage with politics through our work, but whether we engage honestly. I choose honesty over comfort, truth over marketability, remembrance over forgetting.

The Responsibility of the Contemporary Artist
We are living through history right now. Future generations will look back at this moment and ask: Who was paying attention? Who was documenting? Who was brave enough to name what they saw?

As artists, we have a sacred responsibility to be the eyes and hands of our time. We must create work that future “revisionist historians” can point to and say: “Here. This person saw. This person remembered. This person told the truth.”

A Call to Collectors, Curators, and Community
When you acquire a piece of historical truth-telling art, you become a co-conspirator in preservation. You become part of the resistance against forgetting. You invest not just in aesthetic beauty, but in cultural memory.

The art world has the power to shape narrative. We can choose to perpetuate comfortable myths, or we can choose to amplify necessary truths. I challenge galleries, collectors, and fellow artists to ask themselves: What story are we telling? Whose voices are we elevating?

The Future of Truth-Telling
My upcoming piece “Flag Day” explores how symbols are weaponized in protest and patriotism alike. This is the work that must continue—examining how power uses imagery, how resistance reclaims it, how truth emerges in the spaces between.

Art as historical truth-telling is not a trend or a movement—it is a calling. It is the difference between being a decorator and being a documentarian. It is the choice between creating pretty things and creating necessary things.

I am Nard Lee. I am a revisionist historian. And I am here to ensure that the stories that matter most are never forgotten.