“I found that when water is put onto the paper first, then the color can disperse freely and take it’s own path.”
July 13, 2018
Lincoln Park
Leslie met me in the back garden area of my apartment, and I had hoped the space would be clean, manicured, and peaceful. It had been such a space all summer. Contractors, however, had just begun a large refinishing project on the building two days prior. Construction materials were strewn about, and my precious garden was already turning down in preparation for autumn.
I was anxious.
We cleared dirt off the picnic tables and repositioned them so we could work side by side. We sat down, chatted about watercolor materials, and then got to work and shared intimate and quiet thoughts continuously. Leslie built up two or three brilliantly, colored watercolors. I lost track of the brilliant colors and found an image of grays.
As time elapsed, I was restored and whole.
Leslie met me in the back garden area of my apartment, and I had hoped the space would be clean, manicured, and peaceful. It had been such a space all summer. Contractors, however, had just begun a large refinishing project on the building two days prior. Construction materials were strewn about, and my precious garden was already turning down in preparation for autumn.
I was anxious.
We cleared dirt off the picnic tables and repositioned them so we could work side by side. We sat down, chatted about watercolor materials, and then got to work and shared intimate and quiet thoughts continuously. Leslie built up two or three brilliantly, colored watercolors. I lost track of the brilliant colors and found an image of grays.
As time elapsed, I was restored and whole.
August 13, 2019
Hyde Park
How wonderful to spend the morning contemplating the beauty of a tree, even if I couldn’t capture its beauty. It was beautiful just to sit and stare at it and the way the light was filtering through its leaves.
September 5, 2020
Humboldt Park
Watercolor painting outside with Leslie was like dying wood pulp, while walking backwards through light and time in the forest….Janet. A chance to slow down and look. To connect the eye with my hand. To observe color in natural light and translate through the brush.
An invitation to be creative with no pressure or obligation. One of the parts of participating that feels so exciting is that it is not really about the outcome of the painting but the process of looking, using color and feeling what it is like to paint.
An excitement about landscape painting that I have not personally experienced. The invitation by Leslie and feeling of being guided through a process I would never normally initiate. -Marianne together in peace
to capture reflect nature
create in color -Zora ELIOT_ I do wish to revisit our watercolor moment at Annie’s. I’ve thought a lot about the slowing of time at Annie’s place with the watercolors. It was an eyeopener to realize that maybe what I need so desperately right now in this pandemic is to stop and look, use paint as a meditation I have since done some watercolor here on our property and I want to continue when I find the time, not as a medium to master but as a way to enjoy a moment, a way to contemplate, a way to experiment with seeing. It doesn’t require too much like doing a sketch of a design with premeditation.
The other day I went to Michael’s (the closest art supplies) to get my mother some gouaches for her birthday, I thought that it would be an improvement from watching TV all day.
I got to the counter and thought to myself, wait a minute I’m jealous, I don’t even own some gouache paints. But I refrained from buying myself a set as I have so much in the way of art supplies, some barely used. What I really needed to do was find the time and inspiration, to shut everything out except the existential beauty of a moment.
I want to thank you again for allowing me that moment at Annie’s. It stays with me!
July 3, 2019
Soldiers Grove
I think of how our worlds are wound. The winding of worlds creates opportunities for patterns of contact, convergence
and community to form, disperse as such and reform in new configurations.
Sitting on the bank of the Herring Run in July 2019, with watercolors and paper, I tuned in to compositions.
These were not only those formed of moving water, lines, shapes, wind, heat and leaves, but also the communing around which this plein air painting project is structured. My peripheral senses are often stronger than my direct line of sight. And so this setting – a plein air painting date in Baltimore, Maryland, was for me much more about the subject of being, listening and looking together as artists, friends, cousins. It was an opportunity to weave connection into reflections of color, shape, form.
August 10, 2019
Herring Run Park Baltimore
I remember walking into the Garfield Conservatory seeing Leslie with all that she had prepared for the group of people we were planning to meet, she was a bit flustered because some not everyone who said they would be there came – she had taken such great care to provide for all involved – in this moment I felt her heart on her sleeve. That for tied into to whole experience we had together that day. A kind of breaking through any part of the day that might have brought disappointment, distress and just stopping – letting go, resting on a single plant, or in my case, a piece of architecture and how visitors navigated the space. I was so grateful to Leslie for her honest and generous presence, with her you don’t have to wonder, you can just be. A gift.
-Iris.
I remember when we did our plein air painting date with the Spertus fellows. It was more than two years ago, right? We went to Garfield Park Conservatory and maybe half of the group showed up. I remember feeling a little nervous since painting or art making in general is really not what I do but I pushed myself to walk around the conservatory and choose a couple of spots to sit on and try it out. It was very refreshing and meditative, and I’m thankful for the opportunity you gave me to explore that. It would be great to repeat something similar with the group one day!
-Ionit.
You think that you know how to paint/ You go to the conservatory/ You realize that you don’t know how to look
– Roni.
I mostly chose to hang in the desert room at the conservatory because I am from the desert and, simply, that room fills me with longing and belonging, even as it constitutes a fantasy space. Unable to depict what it looks like, my time there also yields a fantasy space. I was truly honored to see some of my little shapes and pareidolic moments in Leslie’s works later. To reconsider art history as our history feels radical and generous and that can be more than enough for an afternoon, for a stray text, for a night in the studio.
As an unconfident but constant drawer, painting with Leslie is a delight — I have such faith in her eye and hand and find myself endlessly impressed by her makings, even when talkative me is left wordless in front of them. We share many traits but continual practice and better-or-worse endlessness is one of them. To share in that sharing and to tether together, well, you know what they say: it’s not nothing to be really quite something.
– Jesse
October 22, 2017
Garfield Park Conservatory
Avery, Max, and I loved the virtual plein air painting date with Leslie. It was a perfect activity during the Stay At Home order.
April 22, 2020
Remote Chicago
August 24, 2019
Little wolf Wisconsin
a small sits dog between two.-KG
August 1, 2018
Back Balcony Chicago
I remember seeing a curious little mouse in the cactus room of the Garfield Park conservatory while we chatted and painted. Not sure if you saw it too. I wonder what kind of life it is to be a little mouse in such a magical place.
Made me think of a poem by Stephen Crane that goes a bit like this:
In the desert
I saw a creature.
squatting upon the ground
held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
November 5, 2019
Garfield Park Conservatory
