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Article:
"Artist got the calling as
a young girl" Lisa Leary's new drawings and paintings inspired
by poetry Entering the Reed Fine Arts Center at the
Williston Northampton School, visitors are quickly reminded of the process that is art. Student drawings and paintings
claiming various degrees of completion line the walls of the open-ended corridors; examples of student sculpture,
some among us, vulnerable, others aloof, enclosed in glass cases, stare back. But none of these can ignore the
determined artists and lovers of art as they come and go, as they hurry to and from class, to draw, to dance, to
play and, invariably, to take risks. The hum of youthful creativity is everywhere there. [*John
Selfridge is a writer, editor, publisher and critic.
He teaches English language and literature in Northampton, Massachusetts. His books include Pablo Picasso (Chelsea "Twenty-eight oil paintings and gouaches
by Lisa Houck Leary are currently on view in the South Gallery of the Art and Graphic Design Department at Greenfield
Community College. This is a superior body of work: and an instance where a painter's involvement with a particular
image, in this case, the figure in a landscape site, can be restated within a narrow range of subject-matter, and
can still avoid the tediousness of duplication. Peter Dudley,
Nancy Gonter,
The Republican,
Oct. 17, 2005
Article:
"Calendar supports ServiceNet"
Holly Angelo,
The Republican,
Nov. 13, 2005
Review:
"Leary Add Content to Old Texts"
Phoebe Mitchell,
Daily Hampshire Gazette,
March 17, 2003
Article:
"Homegrown talent thrives"
M. Justin Farber,
Daily Hampshire Gazette,
October 12, 1995
Article:
"Working artist brings
perspective to classes"
Judson Brown,
Daily Hampshire Gazette,
September 14, 1994
Review:
"Valley exhibit muses to
a New York state-of-mind"
Patricia Wright
Daily Hampshire Gazette,
September 9, 1993
Review:
"Painting without models"
Ingrid Ducamis,
Off-Campus, September
9-15, 1993
Article:
"Hall of Art"
Julie Burrell
Daily Hampshire Gazette,
2001
Article:
"Art on the Town"
Julie Burrell
Amherst Bulletin,
July 13, 2001
Reprints:
Click on Image Above for Full-Size PDF version
The Grubbs Gallery, Reed Fine Arts Center, Williston Northampton School, Easthampton, MA
by John Selfridge* - April, 2007
The Grubbs Gallery, an oasis in this maelstrom, is a softly lit, quiet space particularly suited to an exhibit
of Lisa Leary's work, which, on display there from April 2-29, explores, among its many themes, the possibility
of shape and texture in cohabitation with language, of vessel as both world and source and, similarly, of poetry
as something that gives rise to the visual. Language is thus offered as having a relationship with the visual that
is both generative and conspiratorial.
As the two, opening pieces, poem study #1 and poem study #2 announce, the present collection of recent works on
canvas and paper have a common foundation in poetry in that Leary used her own poetry as the entry into each piece.
In the artist's own words, these works are "inspired by poetry," a phrase that, like all art, cleverly
tells only part of the story. In fact, the role of poetry in these works is not only inspirational but technical;
this is accomplished literally in that the artist began each execution by writing her own poetic musings directly
on the paper or canvas. She then applied line and color to the surface, sometimes but not always covering over
the writing, and the work took on shape and meaning while the foundation itself partially died. But that foundation
also partially survives as visual component of the final piece, just as the inspiration never leaves the work.
Other than the use of and reference to language and poetry, what joins these works is Leary's striking use of vessels,
literally, such as water glasses and bowls; abstract shapes, such as cones, circles, assorted parallelograms, and
others without openings other than those that lead directly through their hearts; and enclosed patterns in nature,
most predominantly stars, moons and leaf shapes, to explore this theme. In the universe delineated by these works,
language, in particular the poem is recognized for and allowed its generative power as well as its tendency to
set boundaries determined by its own limits. Likewise, enumeration, is presented in a playful display of numerical
visuals incorporated into many of the pieces.
In bowls, vessels, pelvis, the association is carried further, to the human body, itself the enclosure or vessel
of the human spirit. Here Leary points to the structural center of the equation: to the place from which one derives
balance, stability, and movement, and of, course, it is the structural place that gives shape to both conception
and birth. Leary imposes the image of the pelvis over that of a bowl (or that of the bowl over that of the pelvis)
to conjure the union of both shape and connotation, of body and abstraction.
The contrast in Leary's use of dense color in the oils and white, or the lack of color, in the works on paper,
is also striking in that it enables her to sustain a thematic continuum through these in many ways contrasting
works. She explores the lush, dark, and uncertain natural world, vividly in dark garden (with moons) for instance,
as freely as she does the clean, bright, more predictable studio space as inner space as in white ache, winter
vessels.
By the time I left the gallery, it was late afternoon, classes had let out, and I was the only remaining visitor
at the Reed Center. The effect of this exhibit on me was the compelling suggestion that language is something that
can give rise to, inform, and coexist with the visual to bring about a whole, the two literally sharing space and
conspiring in the creation. As I walked by the student work in the corridor on the way out, sharing, as I was,
their quiet, enclosed space, I was now the one staring back.
House) and John Coltrane: A Sound Supreme (Scholastic).]
Click on Image Below to Read Entire Press Release
Without resorting to either hard-edge structures, or to excessively fussy detail, Leary sets up refinements in
her paintings through strong color identity, elegance of surface, and classical positioning of figures on sloping
ground-planes. The gestural familiarity of these subtle figures is confounded by a sense that they are either standing
thigh deep in water, or are rooted into the floor or ground.
The figures are further integrated into sites by shapes that are either logical, as in architecturally-vaulted
suggestions, or are as capricious as some of the bulbous forms in Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights".
We can question whether parts of these shape-spaces exist in the landscapes, or are intended to suggest the product
of a viewer's optical system.
In some pieces a strong identity of a primary color has been developed; while in others, a striking absence of
color predominates. Extensive reworking of the canvases has produced some rich surfaces of layered paint. While
it has been a convention among painters to both mix and locate colors according to a system of harmonic grouping,
(for example: a palette based on red-violet, blue-green, and yellow-orange), an intriguing alternative has been
used in these paintings. A primary color dominates; and subtle variants on that primary color generates levels
of activation on the canvas. In the achromatic paintings, mixtures with black, and bumpy, time-worn surfaces challenge
our sense of color and order (which has all too often been dictated by Easter-eggs and gift-wrap).
It is difficult to categorize these paintings into any one of the major directions painting has taken recently.
There is a refreshing absence of nailed-hands, snarling dogs, and flames. The quiet, contemplative power of these
paintings is very gratifying. It is also rewarding to see evidence of a a painter's willingness to spread her concepts
over so many pieces in so concentrated manner of commitment. The exhibit will remain in the gallery through December
14th; and is open to all visitors from 8:00-6:00, Monday through Friday."
Review written for the Greenfield Recorder,
Nov. 30, 1989
Publications
2006, Massachusetts General Hospital Annual Calendar
2005, "Art With a Heart", annual calendar to benefit Service-Net
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