“Witches into Crows” by J.H. Leigh
J.H. (John) Leigh has been busy. His most recent exhibit, “Soliloquies in Abstraction Expressionism” on display at the Community Arts Center in Danville, Kentucky contains no less than twenty-three paintings, none of which could be classified as small. There were so many paintings in his exhibit that the Arts Center had to extend the exhibit into the hallway upstairs. Each of these canvases are fully saturated — dripping with washes and strokes of color, not only to the edge of the picture surface, but often wrapping around the edges of the unframed works.
John is currently the art and writing teacher at Crab Orchard Elementary school in Lincoln County. Strangely enough, I have taught after-school art classes in his classroom as a part of a grant with the Lincoln County schools. At that time (2001 or ‘02), John had not quite ventured into abstraction yet. I recall a very realistic drawing of a bird outside his class door, with an article next to it about the piece. I always find it refreshing when art students in public schools can learn from someone who is practicing what they are teaching, providing an excellent role model for what one can accomplish in the arts. I got a chance to know John a little better over the summer during our Arts Market events, where local artists bring in art to sell on Thursday nights in the basement of the Arts Center. He would always have a great variety of work — realistic nudes and drawings of birds, but I could tell that it was the abstract works that were capturing his attention and his time as an artist. I had not seen his larger works yet, but if they were anything like the small abstractions he was bringing to Arts Market, they had to be great.
A good artist will almost always have what I like to call an “artmobile” – a sensible car with good gas mileage that also happens to hold a lot of art. My vehicle is a late 90’s Ford Escort station wagon. It’s not huge, but you can go to the hardware store, buy several 8 foot pieces of wood and manage to get it home intact. When John delivered his work to be displayed for the exhibit, I was amazed at how many paintings he had packed into his mini-van and at the sizes of the works themselves. I believe he had almost all but one or two of the paintings in a single trip. Unlike an artmobile, most of the galleries at the Arts Center can hold around twelve to fifteen works, depending on the dimensions of the paintings. With twenty three larger-than-usual paintings, I was wondering what we would do with all of them. John’s exhibit spread into the extra spaces in the Grand Hall, wound its way upstairs, and occupied the hallway on the second floor quite nicely.
The paintings in the exhibit have several different styles, which is not unusual to see when an artist is exploring the language of abstraction. Some of the paintings have very long vertical drips running the height of the painting, while others have what appears to be sand added to the paint to add a degree of texture. The greatest commonality between the works is that you can tell that each was created by an artist who loves painting. The push and pull of abstract painting is what makes it such an enjoyable and challenging activity. On one hand, the artist wants the entire painting to look as if it happened naturally, with free, loose applications of color. On the other hand, most artists have to go back to the more logical part of the brain to tame the picture into a reasonable composition. Attempting to find the balance between the loose and the logical can be one of the most challenging obstacles to the contemporary artist.
In his artist’s statement for the exhibit, Leigh says, ” . . . in my art, I seek to reunite myself with that archaic understanding of freedom, that freedom which is actual and pure, the one that existed early, before anthems and allegiances, social security numbers, schedules, and Daylight Savings Time.” In the paintings presented in the show, one can feel the archaic, primitive forms calling out to be recognized. In one painting titled, “Heathendom,” I feel as if I am being watched through the dense leaves of a forest by a large cat waiting to pounce when I am least paying attention. The stripes of the painting and the way that Leigh plays with the shifting ochre and yellow tones of the background tend to hint at such an explanation. It makes sense that the artist would reference primitive man in abstract painting. Man always attempts to construct sense out of the senseless, to imagine pictures and figures where there is only paint and canvas. The senses that I am using to interpret these paintings are the same that would have come into play thousands of years when scanning the depths of the forest, searching for the carnivorous beast that could be my death or my dinner.
“Heathendom” by J.H. Leigh
Thanks for reading,
Brandon Long
Executive Director
Community Arts Center
