The Excavation Method™ – Lee Powell Archeological Abstraction
I Don’t Paint Images.
I Excavate Surfaces.
Every work begins as a layered field of marks, pigment, graphite, text fragments, and symbolic strokes. They are embedded, scraped back, erased, buried beneath matte sediment glazes, then sanded open again.
The canvas becomes strata.
Time becomes the tool.
This approach emerged unintentionally from an early self-portrait — a torn vertical fissure down the heart line.
The rupture revealed something truer: identity, memory, and meaning are archaeological.
They are uncovered, not designed.
The Method
Archaeological Abstraction: Excavation as Creation
The Excavation Method treats the canvas as:
a site, not a stage
- an artefact, not an image
- a record, not a composition
Instead of adding colour to build a picture, the work is formed through:
- layering
- burial
- scoring
- erasure
- sanding
- recovery
Marks are laid down knowing they may vanish.
Those that remain have survived removal, pressure, or burial.
The final image is never created —
it is uncovered.
When the painting stops resisting, whatever remains on the surface is accepted as truth:
a stratified record of decisions, remnants, ghosts, and scars.
Conceptual Foundation
Nothing is placed to remain visible.
Everything is made to be lost — and later found.
Pigment settles like dust in forgotten rooms.
Graphite fractures into carbon ghosts.
Text fragments press into the surface, then disappear, leaving only the memory of their pressure.
In many works, what resurfaces carries the feel of unreconciled fragments — the kind that live beneath consciousness until pressure forces them upward.
The surface becomes a sedimented psyche:
ghost marks, coded residue, blurred recollections, and forms that refuse to disappear.
Though abstract, the work is metaphysical in intention.
The layers mirror the human interior:
identity, history, wounds, and renewal
are accumulated strata.
To meet these paintings is to meet them as one meets a ruin:
slowly, curiously, and with the awareness that history lives beneath the visible.
Materials
Acrylic, charcoal, graphite, loose pigments, sediment glazes, and sculptural abrasion.
Surface tension is created through scoring, dissolution, sanding, and staining.
Featured Works
Six pieces that define the method’s origin and lineage.
They form a narrative arc:
- excavation
- presence
- rupture
- reclamation
- rising
- voice
1. The Excavation
2025
Mixed Media on Canvas
150 × 150 cm / 60 × 60 in
“The Excavation” was created using the Excavation Method — a slow process of layering, burial, erasure, sanding and recovery. Pigment, graphite, text fragments and symbolic marks were embedded, drowned beneath sediment glazes, then scraped back until only ghosts remained.
The central fissure formed through pressure, not design — a geological spine dividing the field.
Nothing here was placed to remain visible.
Everything was laid down to be lost, and later unearthed.
The work is not an image.
It is an artefact: evidence of what was buried, erased, and revealed over time.
2. Presence
2025
Mixed Media on Canvas
150 × 150 cm / 60 × 60 in
“Presence” is the founding work in which the logic behind the Excavation Method first appeared. Painted during the period that birthed ManOS, it holds two lines: the inherited code and the emerging self.
The composition does not overwrite history.
It stands beside it.
Beneath the surface, faint binary markings suggest the rewriting of identity — line by line, breath by breath. The blue field reads as immediacy and consciousness; the yellow, imagined horizon; the cross, the point where belief meets the present moment.
“Presence” is the moment acceptance became methodology.
3. Eclipse of Self
2025 Archibald Prize Submission
Mixed Media on Canvas
120 × 200 cm / 47 × 79 in
“Eclipse of Self” explores the seam between shadow and emergence. The left plane holds lunar darkness — inherited beliefs and long-carried fears. The right opens gradually into quieter light, signifying renewal.
Down the centre runs a translucent gold fissure echoing kintsugi: the recognition that what fractures can become the strongest line.
Over the heart, a subtle lion-flower motif speaks to courage and growth.
The work reads as personal excavation — yet leaves space for the viewer to see their own unfolding within it.
It is the subconscious source from which the Excavation Method later emerged.
4. Unstitched
2024
Acrylic on Canvas
100 × 100 cm / 39 × 39 in
“Unstitched” presents a figure as emblem and mirror — a mascot for living without contortion. The stitched lines, scratches, pins and colour fragments are not wounds but witness marks: evidence of narratives once absorbed and later released.
The patched body reflects the slow act of re-sewing the self from the inside out. The alert eyes turn the figure into a talisman of clarity — a reminder that authenticity begins the moment we stop over-owning what others project.
It is about sovereignty, reclamation, and the right to stand whole.
5. Mary (The Rising)
2024
Acrylic on Canvas
100 × 100 cm / 39 × 39 in
“Mary” is devotion without submission. Her stance is steady, her heart open — poised between prayer and power.
This work honours the quiet conviction that presence, faith, and love are active forces. She does not wait for light. She rises into it.
Legacy begins in the moment a person chooses to stand as they are — with hope, clarity, and dignity.
6. Defiance
2023
Acrylic on Canvas
130 × 100 cm / 51 × 39 in
“Defiance” reflects the moment someone chooses presence over disappearance. Layers of paint and distressed textures move across the face like weather, mapping the threshold where self-silencing ends.
The upward gaze is vulnerable yet unflinching — naming truth without hostility, claiming identity without rebellion.
It is the face of quiet refusal.
Not against others —
but against the instinct to vanish.
Further Context: ManOS
The painting “Presence” later became the central visual symbol of ManOS — a philosophical framework and book exploring the reconstruction of identity, integrity, and inner infrastructure for modern men.
While the work stands independently as contemporary abstraction, some viewers have sought the wider context from which it emerged. ManOS extends from the same principles that shaped the Excavation Method:
- layered identity
- inherited code vs chosen self
- presence over reaction
- reclamation through awareness
Those wishing to explore the written work that grew from this artistic inquiry can find more at:
(Presence is featured within the book in its original form.)
Collecting
Originals are one-of-a-kind.
Each work is accompanied by:
- Signed Certificate of Authenticity
- Reverse-side inscription and poem
- High-resolution photographic documentation
- Provenance details
Pricing, availability, and viewings are available on request.
Enquiries
For collectors, galleries, and exhibitions:
lee@leepowell.com
Follow the Work
Studio practice, process, releases, and method development are shared via: