She makes realistic paintings of real people. Her challenging work first came to wider public attention when her painting Erect, a double portrait of Lee and her then partner sitting side by side in a stiff embrace, was selected for exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery’s annual BP Portrait Award in 1992. Lee’s work has been selected for exhibition in the BP Awards six times, being commended in 1998 and winning the Travel Award in 1996. Lee’s first one-woman show, Venus Envy, was at Manchester City Gallery in 1994, as part of the It’s Queer Up North Festival. She has since had one-woman shows at Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Schwules Museum, Berlin and the Museum of Modern Art, Slovenia. Group shows include exhibitions at the ICA, the Museum of London and Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art.