Interview with Louise Leonard

Описание: Welcome to Graphic studio Gallery’s Interview series.

Since COVID-19 pandemic crisis started, physical access to the gallery has been paused, as well as the access to the studio for artists. Printmaking requires studio facilities, without which the artist's working process is challenged, or completely impossible. To stay in touch with our artists and present for our audience, we have decided to feature one artist at a time by highlighting their work on our social media and online shop. First featured artist is Dublin based printmaker, member of Graphic Studio Dublin, Louise Leonard, whom we are delighted to have here to talk to about her work.

Website: https://graphicstudiodublin.com/
Online shop: https://graphicstudiodublin.com/onlin...
Featured Artist page: https://graphicstudiodublin.com/featu...
'A body of water' exhibition page: https://graphicstudiodublin.com/exhib...

Louise Leonard was born in Dublin in 1960. She graduated from NCAD in 1983 with a BA in Visual Communication. She joined Graphic Studio Dublin in 2004 and served on the Board of Directors from 2011-2015. Se has consistently exhibited with Graphic Studio Gallery and her work features in the 2011 GSD Sponsors’ Portfolio. She teaches lino-cut printmaking at the Studio. She has exhibited with the RHA and the RUA and is a member of the Watercolour Society of Ireland.

Louise Leonard, A Body of Water, 2019

‘O commemorate me where there is water’,

Patrick Kavanagh, Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin, 1950s.

Water is essential to human life. Yet while it has a vital biological function, water also appeals to us psychologically. Depicted in art from ancient times- spanning from abstracted linear stylisations to painterly expressions to representations in sound and film – water metaphorically vitalises, cleanses, soothes, transports.

Architects, engineers, landscape artists, town planners, and artists, across time and regions have sought to understand and exploit the properties of water to serve the needs of citizens. While bodies of water can be immense, forceful and seemingly boundless, humans have persisted in curtailing and controlling its power, in restraining its physical properties. Canals, ponds, diverted rivers and fountains serve both utilitarian and artistic functions. And the function of these constructions may evolve over time. Sites of water in man-made environments have become oases in our modern lives. Canals that were once supply-arteries of raw materials and processed goods from rural areas to industrialised centres are now places of leisure.

This new collection of masterfully made colour etchings by Louise Leonard explores these spaces. Leonard seeks, and finds, beauty and meaning in the landscape, in urban parks and along canal banks. A number of scenes will be familiar to Dubliners, including representations of the artist’s local Royal Canal, the Phoenix Park and the Botanical Gardens. Other images are records of journeys abroad to Italy, Germany and Sweden. The artist is drawn to public parks as egalitarian shared environments, accessible and enjoyed by all in society. In Leonard’s work human intervention has not detracted from the aesthetics of nature but rather they are presented in concert...."
Angela Griffith, September 2019

Read the rest of the essay and check out the exhibition page here:

https://graphicstudiodublin.com/exhib...