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When Art Goes Seismic
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2020/04 - April
Highlands/Cashiers painter Leslie Jeffery is happiest when she’s brushing, pressing, dripping, smearing, swirling, dotting, texturizing, or making any of her signature marks on a super-size canvas.
Here’s how she describes her work: “My paintings feature texture, light or heavy; marks of all kinds; deep colors; patterned backgrounds; drips and various mediums. They convey energy, lyrical or frenetic. They convey mood, serious or lighthearted. I feel successful when I believe the last one is my best one.”
Leslie is an abstract expressionist, a creator of free-flowing, emotionally inspired non-representational shapes and colors, ideas removed from concrete realities, tossed together in a tumble of Wow. When a viewer becomes totally immersed in one of Leslie’s paintings, those colors, shapes, and textures can be seismic.
While her abstracts deck many a hall and wall, it’s probably her iconic bird nests that you recognize the most. She’s sold scores of them to delighted collectors from South Florida to North Carolina and beyond.
A couple of years ago she and Mary Lou Bilbro combined energies, opening the beautiful Carolina Gallery to support many fine artists in the region before the building was sold and re-commissioned. If you’ve missed seeing her work in that venue there are plenty of ops to enjoy more of it around town.
During the season, she’ll be showing at the 4118 Kitchen + Bar, the gift shop at The Bascom, and on “Open Studio” dates at her home in Highlands. In winter, if you’re in the St. Petersburg, Florida, area, look for her work in a variety of exhibitions.
To contact her about a commission or upcoming events, call or text her at (727) 743-1130 or call locally at (828) 524-0887. You can also email Leslie at [email protected] or visit lesliejeffery.art.
