MADE in the Pewsey Vale is excited to introduce Leanda's exhibition Skywards.

 

 "We spend so much time looking down when there’s an ever-changing canvas above us, and every painting in the show started with the sky.  It’s hard to find inspiration in dull winter days, and it wasn’t until that glorious few weeks in May that something clicked.  Now that it’s summer, I can't imagine it being any other way.  It’s quite evident that the works I completed in the early part of the year were informed by the leaden skies of winter - I think that I had just forgotten what colour looked like.  Suddenly, Spring arrived with a huge burst of sunshine, highlighting the luminous green, and I moved outside to paint faster with acrylic, which was ideal because it dries quickly and is extremely bright. 

 

The brooding oil canvases of darker days have definitely earned their place too, though, because although it may sound like a bit of a cliché, we all long for the blue sky underneath, it’s just harder to remember it’s there sometimes.  Our own desire to create meaning is reflected in how we feel when we stare up at a cloudless sky.  

 

We get lost in the lack of stimulus, and there’s something immersive about it, boundless and eternal.  Painters have striven to depict concepts like ‘love’ over the centuries but I think that the most effective way to try to capture something so intangible is to be a little abstract.   I feel that I'm still searching for my visual language but am happy to dedicate my practice to the frustration of exploring it."