The Mesa Series
Produced for an exhibition for the Attleboro Arts Museum that celebrated the Attleboro Big Read of Ron Carlson’s novel “Five Skies,” Lesley has created a meeting place in these tables that speaks to metaphysical and spiritual senses of attraction, belonging, and coming together. Her technique of acrylic pour leaves much spontaneity in the work, surrendering her control as artist to gravity, the form of the table, and the ways in which the layers of acrylic give way, push, and move with one another. A sense of powerlessness and underlying processes manifest in the surface of the table where the act of pouring the acrylic has produced an unexpected effect—a fundamental order of gravity, the weight of the acrylic, and the combination of physical states at the time of the pouring, are made visible on the surface.
The technique of acrylic pouring is ‘easy to do, difficult to master,’ and Lesley, with these two artworks, has demonstrated two distinct ways of employing this method. In Mesa View from Above, Lesley more intricately guided the paint, adjusting the pour to achieve an image where the paint was more localized and contained. In Mesa Blue Skies, Lesley allowed the paint to spread liberally across the surface, privileging large swathes of rich blue color.
VIEW FROM ABOVE
acrylic paint and transparent glazes
With carefully orchestrated acrylic pours, Lesley has imagined the landscape of the Five Skies, the canyon, the mesa, Shanghai Landing, the homestead. The deep red and orange earth tones ground the piece with familiarity, the terrain that we traverse and which surrounds us, through changes, places, times, and experiences, under a sky of rich blues and whites. Lesley envisioned how “we move through the terrain of our lives individually, come together, and go our separate ways. The landscape remains and is there for us if we choose to return. It holds us and anchors us as a table does. The crystal embedded in the table top indicates ‘You are here.’”
The wavering of the shapes mimics the ebb and flow of our experience across time and space. At different instances, we see our environment through different lenses. When we join with others, we do so under pretenses that reveal the trials and tribulations of communal existence—but the earth, and this table as it stands, remain in space, to ground us.
BLUE SKIES
acrylic paint and transparent glazes
Lesley has encapsulated the dynamic drama of the sky. There is a harsh disparity between hues of blue alongside one another, oozing and pushing against one another, and the striking appearance of a deep red and a jarring white, but simultaneously, there is a spontaneous joining and mixing of the tones as they swirl among one another.
As she explains, “The canvas of the sky is omnipresent. It affects us every day whether we are conscious of it or not. Dull and flat gray, bright blue with cotton ball clouds, deep indigo sliced by white lightning, layers of pink and orange and purple at sunset. In a place like the mesa, it is impossible to be unaware of its effect.”
Lesley has captured the excitement and world within the sky, and honoring the ways in which it looks over us with vibrancy. Her relinquishing of total control over the technique of acrylic pour speaks to our humility under the force of the sky.
As we come together at this table, we’re drawn into the intricacies of the mixing, swirling, breaking, and moving of the acrylic that seem to never cease.