Cambridge Buzz: Artist Profile

Leslie Parke lives and works in the Cambridge, NY area. After completing her BA and MA at Bennington College, she divided her time between making television documentaries with Michael Marton and painting. For the last twenty years she has painted fulltime.

Her work has been shown throughout this country, Europe, and South America. She spent five months at the Claude Monet Foundation in Giverny, France as part of the Lila Wallace Arts International Artist-in-Residence Grant. She was recently awarded The George Sugarman Foundation Grant for painting.

Her work is currently on exhibit at the Gibsone Jessop Gallery in Toronto, Canada, the David Zapf Gallery in San Diego, California, and within a short drive, at The Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester, until July 11th.

Leslie talks about her current exhibit (which is well worth going to see), “When you enter Gallery 2 - Yester House at the Southern Vermont Arts Center you are stepping into a lot of water. The water is not on the floors, however, it is on the walls -- in the paintings. For an artist water is the perfect element to explore the nature of light, reflection and transparency, and it is all provided for you on a conveniently flat surface. This makes it possible to play with both visual illusion and with paint. For a painter, this is better than a day at the beach!”

“People have said that with my latest painting, "Battenkill Tapestry" I have changed my style. Nonsense. I paint what I see and that is what I saw. Every blade of grass, every branch transformed in the fall colors was reflected in the water that was disturbed by gently rustling wind. Had there been no wind and no color except the reflection of sky, the painting would look like "Lily Pond" -- a large expanse of blue. The quality of light in a painting is always the most important element to me. When it seems as though the light is emanated from inside the painting, I'm happy.”

And so will you be happy, go witness that light!