Past and Future:
Richard Remson-Glass: June 2008
Roy Germon-Paintings: July 2008
Robert Kantor at BSU: Sept-Oct 2008
Glass by Martin Kremer: October 2008
Glass by Ben Coombs: November 2008
Jewelry by Tracy Johnson: December 2008

September 5 - 27, 2008

Emily Leonard: The Fallow Season
Artist Reception: Friday, September 12, 5 - 8 PM

Emily Louise Leonard, The Fallow Season, oil on panel, 27" x 36".

For Emily Louise Leonard's first solo exhibition at the Daniel Kany Gallery, The Fallow Season, the artist presents a series of subjective landscapes glazed in many layers of oil. Because of her working process, the 9 paintings and 4 drawings present many months of focused work by the Nashville artist.

Emily Louise Leonard, We Were Free, oil on panel, 24" x 18".

Landscape for Leonard, is an emotional place where the viewer instills herself as she might in a memory or dream. The works are hardly literal, and even when based on drawings of real places, they are rendered in the studio without pre-determined specificity. Because of this, Leonard is able to put her tremendous talents as a painter and colorist to work with both subtlety and a rare intensity.

Emily Louise Leonard, Born with a Weak heart, oil on panel, 41" x 64".

Leonard’s paintings often surprise the viewer up close: in this day where so many artists work in encaustic or resin or acrylic glazes, it is unusual to see an oil painting glazed with a dozen or so layers unless one is looking at works made in past centuries. With her loose and confident mark-making, however, Leonard is hardly trying to merely copy a style based in the techniques of a more patient age. Indeed, Leonard's landscapes are clearly contemporary paintings: they boldly announce their own status as objects while clearly and respectfully aware of the viewer's presence as well.

Emily Louise Leonard, It Rained That Morning, oil on panel, 6" x 9".

In several of the works, Leonard leaves some areas at the edges of her panels largely bare. One effect of this is to reveal the paintings as objects and to allow the viewer a tool for seeing the layering process from the outside in. To further this visual option, Leonard uses relatively thick supports for her panels. The depth of the panels, however, offers several other experiential effects, including removing the viewer's focus from the plane of the wall to hold it in a unique space of its own – which can be mesmerizing with some of the smaller panels.

By allowing the legibility of the object-status of the paintings, Leonard makes it very clear that she is producing images rather than windows. For example, the title painting – The Fallow Season – reads more like an aged photograph than a painting. The visual impact, however, surprises by presenting itself as a whole and unmediated image rather than a constructed object: Leonard’s rarest achievement might be this swirling subjectivity. While her endeavor as a painter is rigorously intelligent and rendered with a virtuoso's hand, Leonard's emotional sensibilities guide the deeply moving impact of her work.

The Fallow Season also includes four drawings by Leonard (as well as a very reasonable print of an owl, titled Leavetaking). The drawings themselves are masterful and underscore the artist's ability to develop a surface into a compelling space. They also serve to illustrate her extraordinary skilled mark-making as well as her ability to flow between the intimacy of scale and the grandiosity of the human imagination.

The Fallow Season will be on view at the Daniel Kany gallery through September 27, 2008.

For more information and publication-quality images, please contact Daniel Kany.