Senior Studio I

Monday, April 10, 2023

Rest of sketchbook

Monday, April 3, 2023

drawings for sale - open studio

I have made the following 5x7 inch original works for sale at the open studio for $10 each. they are made with alcohol-based markers, paint markers, and washi tape (on 4 of the clown drawings). The subjects of the drawings borrow from my paintings and the clown I designed for the Fever. Dream. Blast. poster. I mounted 5.5x7.5 inch black paper onto the back of each drawing to give them some more support/finalize each one.

Monday, March 27, 2023

Finished painting

Blossoms in the Suburbs, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 inches.

This painting explores the feeling of girlhood abruptly ended and the (often) traumatizing nature of this experience. I referenced google street images of my house from google earth, of which were taken at a time I still lived at the house (obvious through scribbly chalk drawings and my dads’ truck in the driveway). I found these images intriguing since they would have been taken when I was younger than 10 years old. The empty lot next to this house that my sisters and I played is now constituted by a large, industrial garage.

I also referenced photo album pictures for the silhouettes of my sister and I using a photograph taken of us playing on the beach. With a bit of manipulation to the forms it was easy to make them appear to be drawing with chalk instead. The silhouette of the girl with braids is intentionally open to interpretation regarding her gaze: is she looking down at the chalk drawings or is her head turned to look at the mushroom clouds behind?). Either way. these shadows are an imprint of the moment before the disaster fully takes hold, with the kids innocently drawing/interpreting the nuclear fallout behind their house as yellow flowers in the sky.

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Artist Statement

BIO

Leah Evans is an emerging artist based in Lethbridge Alberta. She grew up in small towns across Alberta, with most of her early childhood spent in Rimbey and later years primarily in Drayton Valley. The aesthetics and social forms of these environments play a role in her paintings that focus on memory and early childhood experience. Currently, Leah is working towards a BFA in Art at the University of Lethbridge. She is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, including the Roloff Beny Foundation Award in Photographic Art and the Gushul Studio Artist Residency Prize.

Artist Statement

In my practice one topic that I am currently exploring is femininity, branching off from my personal experience as a young woman. Topics such as ‘female rage’ and women’s mental health are concerns of my work that reference a broad scope of experience, including sources from real life as well as media and literature. In my painting, Shower (2023), I depict two female figures showering and menstruating, and question (or call to attention) the history of representing women in art and the viewers’ voyeuristic gaze. This painting conveys for me a feeling of inner turmoil. Could womanhood be considered as the death of childhood?

Exploring this question, I am painting referencing snapshots taken from Google street view of my childhood home and street. Pictorial representations merge with visuals from memory. The images are threatened by the orange ‘nuclear’ sky which depicts a moment before the inescapable desecration to the alluded child and the safety of their familiar surroundings.

As a painter, my art often references family albums or photographs which I take myself - the former being the case with my most recently completed series, Gone Creatures (2022). With these paintings I first attempt to play with this space that exists between memory and pictorial representation, questioning the value and legitimacy of both in relation to one another. The work presents a reflection on a child’s interpretation of their surroundings, with the proximity and omnipotence of parental figures and threatening creatures acting to underscore the uncertainties of childhood and its distresses and fears.