LESLIE ALLEN CADENZA
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LESLIE ALLEN CADENZA
Nothing as drastic as abstract art could have come into existence save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience – intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic. Robert Motherwell
23 Sunnyside Ave. l Mill Valley, CA 94941 l 415.38 4.8288 l seagergray.com
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LESLIE ALLEN: CADENZA Exhibition Dates: July 2 - July 30, 2013 Reception for the Artist: Friday, July 12, 6 to 8 PM Front Cover: Leslie Allen, My Sausalito, oil on canvas, 48 x 48” Back Cover: Leslie Allen, Winter Ivory, oil on canvas, 48 x 48” Photography Credits: Craig Kolb Direct inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 23 Sunnyside Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 415.384.8288 art@seagergray.com
All Rights Reserved
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Arpeggio oil on canvas over panel, 48 x 48�, 2013 6
LESLIE ALLEN CADENZA Setting fire to something can sometimes be a wonderfully creative act, provided that the fire continues on. Charles Baxter, (writing on David Byrne / Talking Heads “Burning Down the House”)
Nearly 30 years ago, Leslie Allen leased her first studio in Sausalito overlooking the water. She had come to Northern California to raise her young daughter and brought with her a fierce determination and a work ethic that would not be suppressed. “It is true that I seem to paint as though my feet are on fire,” she says, “mostly because I have no idea when I approach a canvas what’s going to happen or how I will face the challenge of blankness or marks already there, and also because my available time to paint is too limited.” Her exhibition, Cadenza celebrates these thirty years with a body of work that is a triumph of classical modernism, channeling with new vitality the spirit of her greatest influences, Richard Diebenkorn and Henri Matisse. Looking at her paintings, My Sausalito, I and II (pages 6 &7), one can’t help but think of Diebenkorn working from Sausalito some 66 years earlier looking at the same view of the bay harbor and the same light when he had a studio there from 1947 to the end of 1949. Diebenkorn, for his part brought his own imaginings of Matisse in Collioure, the fishing village on the Mediterranean where he did some of his most important work. In these paintings, Allen has managed to utilize the Matisse-like use of pattern, flat shapes and high contrast while incorporating Diebenkorn’s keenly developed sense of structure and proportion. Her use of plumb lines to break up and ground more patterns in the vivid blue space orchestrates the experience for the viewer into a slide show of the myriad shapes, colors and contrasts that daily enchant her in the view from her studio window. In other paintings, Arpeggio (left) and RD (page 3) I am reminded of Diebenkorn’s Berkeley series, particularly Berkeley #57, 1955. The chromatic mastery of color, the ochres, ambers, reds and blues are skillfully executed in both and the palettes resonate. In Arpeggio, the division of
space is more clearly delineated and black linear patterns mimic piano keys. Allen began playing the cello at an early age and after a long hiatus she has recently resumed a practice of playing every day with the same steady determination applied to painting. She and artist/architect husband, Barry Peterson share a sophisticated appreciation for music and she credits him for being her “DJ” in his selections of music for their nightly art making hours. Looking at this body of work, it is easy to imagine Allen “seeing” with a soundtrack, carefully choosing a musical sequence that informs the rhythm of each painting. In Every Single One (page 15) the shape of another stringed instrument, a guitar perhaps, hovers in the upper left corner of the work, suggesting an acoustic background to the watery abstract vista, buzzing with nighttime activity.
Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley 57 oil on canvas, 58 3/4 x 58 3/4, 1955 7
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My Sausalito (left) oil on canvas over board, 48 x 48” 2013 My Sausalito II (right) oil on canvas over panel, 48 x 36” 2013
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The Kiss oil on canvas over panel, 35 x 36�, 2013
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Then there are the seemingly “quiet” paintings. The two very successful paintings Winter Ivory and Winter White (pages 10 & 11) began, as the artist explains “over extremely dark and aggressive underpaintings (afterburns, they seemed) and these are resurrections of a sort, by way of hundreds of white butterfly kisses (actually brush “whippings”) blown across the surface to calm and quiet an otherwise dark situation.” These are engaging works where the subtle edges of the leafy shapes fall like feathers down the canvas, but there are glimpses of so much activity below the surface, a kind of “taming of the beast” that give both works a depth and complexity that is entirely satisfying. Occasionally, Allen likes to copy-paint works by others from postcards or magazines as a kind of shout out to favorite works as she has done in In Praise of Maize (page 19) and Twins (page 23). These are the two largest paintings in the exhibition, both 60 x 72” and the placement of the trompel’œil images pinned or pasted to the large surface not only references those artists’ works but they play with the picture plane. In both of these paintings, Allen has created a spacious illusion of depth as though we might fly into the center of them. The added images remind us that they are paintings and actually flat - an illusion upon an illusion. Another element that Allen shares with Diebenkorn is the fascination with the landscape as seen from the window of a low-flying plane, as in many of the Albuquerque paintings. These clear marks on the landscape became a life long fascination for Diebenkorn and formed the basis of many of his later abstract works.
Richard Diebenkorn Untitled Albuquerque gouache, oilstick on paper, 11 x 14, 1951
Loop the Desert and Loop the Ocean (pages 10 & 11) work together as a pair and create a visual representation of the artist’s ocean to desert to ocean migrations as she travels back and forth to visit her family in a plane. Paintings like The Kiss (left) , A Grand Day out for S & P (page 13) and Someone I Used to Know (page 19) are inspired by Allen’s work with cut out collage where contrast, shape and pattern become the vernacular of the painting. In The Kiss (left) in particular, the artist speaks about that “sweet spot” where a seamless transition can be made between one element and another in the work. In this painting there is a translation from collage into painting which allows the artist to use drawing line and painterly fields of white ground to give the painting a lushness while benefitting from the strong “bones” of the work inspired by collage. Finally, there are the more lyrical paintings, Blue Dory (page 12) , For Pink (page 16) and Rain Glory (page 18) In these paintings, more reminiscent of Joan Mitchell than Diebenkorn, the artist maintains a studied fluidity, drawing with the liquid paint upon an abstract ground. Melodic passages like leitmotifs are formed by sinuous fluid lines of paint taking the viewer on a journey through the creative process. Born in Alamogordo, NM and raised in El Paso, TX, Leslie Allen grew up in the scorching high desert and relief from the burning heat was found in excursions to the nearest pool or field trips to distant lakes. From early on she has had a fascination with fire and water. She has said that she had fantasies at an early age of setting fires for the thrill of extinguishing them. This speaks to a longing for intensely felt experience, a physical interaction with her world that she finds in painting, where an artist can be immersed in the medium. The title for the exhibition, Cadenza refers to a portion of a concerto in which the orchestra stops playing, leaving the soloist to play alone in free time. The Cadenza is reserved for accomplished soloists who can be relied upon to improvise without losing the tone of the piece, often providing a showcase for their virtuosic talent.
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Winter Ivory oil on canvas over panel, 48 x 48�, 2013 12
Winter White oil on canvas over panel, 48 x 48�, 2013 13
Last Night I Dreamed of Matisse oil on canvas, 36 x 35”, 2013 Loop the Desert oil on canvas over panel, 40 x 40”, 2013 14
Loop the Ocean oil on canvas over panel, 40 x 40�, 2013 15
Blue Dory, (above) oil on canvas over panel, 40 x 40�, 2013
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A Grand Day Our for S & P mixed media oil on canvas over panel, 35 x 36�, 2013
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Every Single One mixed media on canvas over panel, 35 x 36�, 2013
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For Pink oil on canvas over panel, 35.5 x 36�, 2013
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In Praise of Maize mixed media on canvas over panel, 60 x 72�, 2013 20
Rain Glory oil on canvas over panel, 35 x 36�, 2013
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Someone I Used to Know mixed media oil on canvas over panel 30 x 24�, 2013
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Sunny Reprise mixed media on canvas over panel, 35 x 36�, 2013
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Twins oil on canvas over panel, 60 x 72�, 2013 24
Wall of Tales mixed media on panel, 36 x 24�, 2013
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LESLIE ALLEN SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009 “De-Construct,” Gallery 111, Sausalito CA
2013 “Leslie Allen: Cadenza, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA
2008 “Secrets” Group Exhibition, Artisans Gallery, San Rafael
2011-12 “Leslie Allen: New Paintings” Seager Gray Gallery, Mill
2008 “Does Size Matter,” Gallery 111, Sausalito CA
2007 Projekt30.com November 2007 Juried On-line Exhibition
Valley, CA
2009-10 “For Paint’s Sake” Donna Seager Gallery, San Rafael
2007 “Variations on a Hue,” Artisans Gallery, San Rafael CA
2008 “Taking the Plunge” Donna Seager Gallery, San Rafael, CA
2006 Projekt30.com December 2006 Juried On-line Exhibition
2004 “Dichotomies” Eclexion, Mill Valley CA
2006 Projekt30.com July 2006 Juried On-line Exhibition
2004 “Small Paintings” Shoe Envy, Mill Valley CA
2006 “Ebb & Flow” Sausalito Arts Commission Juried Group Exhibition, Sausalito CA
2001 “Quirkies” Mill Valley Library, Mill Valley CA 1999 “All My All” Mill Valley City Hall, Mill Valley CA
2005 “Under the Influence” First Presbyterian Church, Sausalito
1986 Stackhouse Gallery, San Francisco CA
2003 Group Show, Jessica Hall Associates, Larkspur CA
1982 Rogers & Wells, San Diego CA
2002 “Abstractly” O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley CA 2002 Sausalito Bay Model Group Show, Sausalito Artists Association, Sausalito CA
SELECTED JURIED AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1996 College of Marin, Monotype Marathon + Auction, Kentfield
2013 artMRKT Art Fair, SF, CA, Seager Gray Gallery 2013 “What About Me?” Self-Portrait Exhibit, Gallery 111,
CORPORATE PATRONS
Sausalito CA 2013 Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Altered Show,
Alliance Capital Management, San Francisco CA
Novato, CA
Boeger Winery Inc., Placerville CA
2012 Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Altered Book Show,
Doral Park Avenue Hotel, New York NY Espire Communication, Tulsa OK
Novato, CA 2012 Artists’ Books Exhibit, Gallery 111, Sausalito, CA
Green Music Center, Rohnert Park, CA
2012 Miami Aqua Art Fair, Miami, FL, Seager Gray Gallery
Phillip Burton Federal Building, San Francisco CA
2012 “Mild to Wild” Abstract Art Show, Gallery 111, Sausalito
Federal Home Loan Bank, San Francisco CA
2012 “Go Figure”, Gallery 111, Sausalito CA
Hansen Bridgett, San Francisco CA
2011 Aqua Miami, Represented by Seager Gray Gallery, Mill
Inn at Spanish Bay, Pebble Beach CA Law Offices of J. Frank George APC, San Rafael CA
Valley, CA 2011 Inaugural Exhibit, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA
Murphy Pearson Bradley & Feeny, San Francisco CA
2011 Summer Salon, Donna Seager Gallery, Mill Valley, CA
Tropicana Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV
2011 Marin Museum of Modern Art “Altered Book Show”,
ART EDUCATION
Novato, CA
1989-92 Academy of Art, San Francisco CA, Fine Art
2011 “Genius is Mysterious”, Projekt30.com Juried On-line
1982-89 College of Marin, Kentfield CA, Fine Art
Exhibition 2010 “Drawings: Line to Shadow: A Baker’s Dozen” Marin
1982-94 Painting Mentors and Private Teachers in California,
County Civic Center, San Rafael, CA 2010 “Surface/Tension : H20”, Bay Model Visitors Center, Sausalito, CA
1978-80 UCSD San Diego CA, Graphic Arts
New Mexico & France 1995-11 Residencies + workshops, most recently Crown Point Press, San Francisco, CA
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23 Sunnyside Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941 415.384.8288 www.seagergray.com 28