Artist Focus: Linda Leslie

A focus on the artwork of Linda Leslie

Linda Leslie is an artist who has never stopped growing, exploring and collaborating. She grew up in a family of creatives with her father, mother and her two younger sisters. Since the 1980s Leslie has focused on studying and practicing painting and core drawing techniques that have empowered all her work since then. Her love of the human figure and decades of live model figure drawings have served to hone her perception and rendering skills, as well as to produce a library of reference drawings that she has used for most of her paintings.Arena 2, oil and tempera on panel, 10 x 10"

Arena 4, oil on panel, 24 x 18"During the early lockdown days of the pandemic, Leslie continued to paint or draw every day. As access to live models became practically impossible, she adapted and began to rely on her library of drawings to create some of her most powerful works to date. Recently, as there has been a general lifting of the pressure and constraint of the pandemic, Leslie has expressed this freedom and exuberance in a series of paintings she calls Arena. She is living and working from her imagination in creating these circus-like scenes with her collection of horse figurines—to work from life—and adding the human figures from her drawings. The palette is also an expression of this exuberance in that colors are very saturated and festive. “I find that I’m even wearing more color now,” says Leslie. For her, art and life are inseparable. —Arena 1, oil and tempera on panel,10 x 20"