Sarah Theresa Lee: The Inner Archive — Intimacy, Fantasy, and a “Process with No Process"

Sarah Theresa Lee paints domestic scenes that feel like stage sets for the psyche: living rooms, bathrooms, and bedrooms where women, animals, and masked children share the same charged air—unsettling, off-kilter, and strangely familiar all at once. In this episode of The Russi Hive, Alejandra and Sarah talk about how a self-described doodler and lifelong horror-movie obsessive went from ballpoint pen drawings at the kitchen table to a debut New York solo show at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, while still working as a psychiatric nurse in London.From there, they move from lockdown boredom and a reluctant first Instagram post to an outpouring of small drawings and paintings that strangers instantly recognized themselves in, and to the discovery that her “naive” style—flat bodies, puppet-like figures, skewed perspective—wasn’t a flaw to correct but the very thing that made the work feel unique. They explore her inner “cabinet of curiosities,” the mental archive where childhood perfumes, cheap shampoos, bunny slippers, horror VHS covers, and awkward family interiors all get stored and later recombine into images that collapse nostalgia, menace, and deadpan humor on a single surface.Along the way, Sarah reflects on growing up around serious mental illness, why working in psychiatric care has taught her how thin the line is between “normal” reality and overflowing inner worlds, and how art-making functions as a form of escape that lets her process without turning patients into material. They talk about being self-taught as both freedom and “box,” why she prefers to leave interpretation open, and the importance of laughing—even in the darkest stretches of life.Original music and sonic identity by Antfood.Sound design: Federico Casazza.Follow The Russi Hive:YouTubeInstagramTikTokSubstack