Leslie Parke Sketchbooks from 1979 - 1986

I've been having conversations with Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267 - 1337, born in Florence, Italy) since I was twelve years old and my class studied the Renaissance. The conversation became obsessive when in 1987 I created a cycle of paintings recreating the paintings of the Arena Chapel on seven shaped canvases, the largest of which is 18 by 24 feet.

I lost the use of both thumbs and my hands were in splints for several months.

I knew that my ability to paint was not just in my hands, nor was I the first artist to face this limitation. Renoir suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and his brush had to be strapped to his hand. Chuck Close became a quadriplegic but regained use of his arms. He, too, strapped his brush to his hand and paints, sometimes guiding the right hand with his left.

Over the last year I have had several versions of an exhibition that I call, Continuous Flow. The first in Boston at Soprafina Gallery, the second and largest at SUNY Oneonta, and in April, a third at Gremillion and Company, Fine Art, Inc. in Houston, Texas.

These shows came at an interesting time for me. In 2017, as I was preparing for these exhibitions, I lost use of my hands for six months. I had double trigger thumbs, which meant I could not bend my thumbs, write my name, or hold a brush. What to do? I kept working.

Several years ago as I crossed the Mall in Washington on my way back to my hotel, I decided I had to duck into the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, part of the Smithsonian, and see the Asian work there. On display was the Price Collection, on loan from Los Angeles. The first piece I saw as I entered the exhibition was "Pine and Plum Trees in Snowstorm" by Katsu Jagyoku, the 18th Century Japanese artist.

The room was dimmed and soft light fell on an enormous screen with branches and falling snow. I felt completely enveloped by the piece. I had both a calm and emotional response to it, a feeling that has stayed with me to this day.

Several years ago I decided that I wanted to do a set of lithographs based on a painting I did of an almond tree.  Having never made a lithograph before I thought I'd share the process with you and get your input along the way.

I made 4-plate lithograph, that I printed in different colors to represent different times of the day.  

Even a child needs a room of her own. Mine was a square of light on the floor of the living room. At dawn, I opened one of my parent’s two art books and placed it in the square. The dust lit by the eastern morning light swirled before me as I squatted akimbo; my knees bent flat to the floor in the shape of an M. I leaned my torso forward and pressed my face into the color reproductions of Fifty Centuries of Art. Here in the tiny landscapes behind Roger Van Der Weyden’s Madonna and the curtained Dutch rooms of Vermeer, worlds opened up to me that are at once more vivid and appealing than the one I lived in.

Like Alice, I longed to be on the other side. I wanted to live inside a painting.

Nine years ago I spent seven weeks as an artist-in-residence at AIR Vallauris, which is walking distance to the Mediterranean. One of the advantages of returning to a residency is that you already know where everything is; where to buy food, get your laundry done, and buy materials. You can hit the ground running.

When I first arrived in Vallauris I started photographing immediately. I knew that my eyes are freshest when I first land in a place and even after a day or two I can become visually immune to the environment.I was looking for something very specific. I wanted my subjects to appear abstract, and I wanted them to have layered and visually ambiguous space.That is not how things started for me in Vallauris. The first thing that caught my eye were the utility boxes that are inserted into the side of a building.