Nelson Hee

After years of being a commercial designer/illustrator, I decided to embark on creating my personal visualizations to share with others what I see and maybe elicit an emotion that is undefined or undiscovered. To show what can’t be seen and to talk about it without uttering a single word.

I hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with distinctions in Print and Drawing from California College of the Arts (formerly California College of Arts and Crafts) and an MA in Medical Illustration (Biomedical Communications) from UC San Francisco, School of Medicine. I was a board-certified medical illustrator for 20 years. 

“The Mooring Series” is a watercolor collection of just that. Initially, I just liked the idea as a subject matter but as things progressed, I wondered WHY was I doing this. What was the metaphor? We are all attached to something/someone that offer us security/comfort of sorts or bondage. Some of us have been moored so long that we have gathered the barnacles and whatever influences from the tides of Life. Some of us break away early but others maintain their hold until their final days when they cannot maintain their strength – burdened by years of buildup, becoming brittle, snap and fall away — to be replaced by a new tether.