Leigh bell-koch
Hoffberger school of painting
MICA Maryland Institute College of Art
Specialisms: Painting / Drawing /
Location: Baltimore, United States
Leigh bell-koch
First Name: Leigh
Last Name: bell-koch
Specialisms: Painting / Drawing
Sectors:
My Location: Baltimore, United States
University / College: MICA Maryland Institute College of Art
Course / Program Title: Hoffberger school of painting
About
My name is Leigh (they/them), and I am an oil painter based in Baltimore, MD. In my current work, I create evocative and colorful group scenes, which explore contemporary night life. They are in the lineage of genre paintings, a historical tradition that seeks to capture what everyday life looks and feels like in the moment. I aim to create a deep feeling of "sonder" in my work, which is the awareness that everyone has a story (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig) I create scenes that encourage storytelling, but draw attention to the power and limitations of appearances. I use a wide variety of techniques to achieve this in each painting. I remove paint with rags and sandpaper; I create thin, atmospheric glazes with rollers, and add texture and detail with oil pastels. This diversity of mark reflects the wide range of experiences happening simultaneously within each scene. The obscured figures become empty vessels for the viewers' projections, and I want them to pay attention to the process of metabolizing and creating others through perception and interpretation.
In this series of paintings, I portray the life I have found in cities, where freedom and ease of movement create daily encounters with other people. The foundation of my work is people watching and sketching in leisure spaces, such as bars and concerts. I am interested in the strange friction that occurs when individuals, full of their own universes, consent to share space. I wonder what it means to be in proximity with each other. I capture candid gestures, and then bring them back to my studio to create paintings that hold a seed of truth about the original moment. Each decision in the studio complicates the scene, adding ambiguity that opens up the paintings to multiple interpretations from the audience. I am not telling one story of community. I transform these group settings into sites of potential--anything can happen here.