Chris Leonard-Artist Statement

    If I were decidedly effective in my artistic endeavors through action and energy I’d arrive at a sensation of elemental power. The twenty-first century in America, so many choices! But are these choices always clear? I seem to find myself meandering off into symbolic meaning, metaphysical speculation, and contemplative moods. As soon as I answer one question and solve a problem another three or five invariably show up. Some of my solutions become increasingly whimsical, fanciful, or even downright nonsensical. It appears that life will keep giving me plenty of opportunity in the problem-solving category. What I want is a smile on the face, a twinkle in the eye, a healthy glow in the gut, and maybe even a friend to confide in. If I don’t have these things, I’ve decided to make them.

    What am I making? Expanding from visual ideas relating to my family and the constant churning change of time that is our life that keep finding their way onto both paper and canvas, it appears that these figurative vessels and creatures apparently would fall in a “dysfunctional ware” category. We’re four pets less at the Leonard household than when we moved in; but four humans, five cats, and a dog populate our home. This “family” and the personalities they exhibit seem to fuel my need to create reflections of them/us and our history. These reflections on our “human condition”, if and when they are finished, put my perceptions into a moment in time and into a specific space, but are they ever finished?

    I don’t want a label of separation. The term “artist” seems somehow too broad and narrow at the same time. Of course there can also be much interpretation open to the word cat or dog. I believe I’m a painter now working (painting?) in clay. An inquiry into the realm of ceramics appears to be an examination into a metaphor for life itself. Technique and pure science meet imagination and mystery head on-the results can be beyond ones wildest expectations or fall disappointingly short of preconceived notions. Patience, persistence, and a determination to grow, adapt, adjust become readily apparent. The ability to coordinate a number of related, yet distinct steps in the creative process as in life can double your energy flow or knock it in half in a hurry. Spending more than a decade teaching Algebra I, my least favorite subject at the hands of Mr. Bradley during the 1976-77 school year seems to have provided a medley of multiple possibilities: I yearn for the solution that patience and perseverance can offer. I admire practicality, function and systematic logic yet my imagination and intuitive nature find numerous roadblocks or detours. Where can organization and imagination achieve peaceful coexistence? I plan on plugging and chugging along to see if I can get closer to finding out.