First Look, 2023

James C. Leonard  

James Leonard has emerged as one of California's leading abstract expressionist painters. Leonard's emotionally charged compositions, which at first appear purely abstract, often suggest embedded landscapes, figures, and objects. Working with acrylics on canvas or board, Leonard uses bold horizontal and vertical strokes and variegated color to suggest different moods, seasons, registers, art historic resonations, etc. While one work might convey a lacy, Rococo, light decorativeness, another might seize the viewer with high-contrast lights and darks and drastic strokes in a Baroque manner, deep with gravitas. “Just as our lives unfold in unique and beautiful ways, so do my paintings have their own unique and individual expression. Most artists work from the outside in, the subject is outside of themselves. I work from the inside out," says Leonard.

Abstract Expressionism or Action painting, which had its beginnings in Surrealism in Europe of the 1930s, came to full fruition in New York of the 1940s and '50s in a group called the Abstract Expressionists. Influenced by the Surrealists, who had re-settled in NYC due to Germany's occupation of France, this younger generation of Americans is responsible for giving the U.S. its first 'home-grown' school of international art. Just as Jazz music was the first totally American musical form of international proportions, so Abstract Expressionism was a uniquely American language of art, which influenced artists on every continent. Even Picasso had to retort with his near-abstractions of the 1970s!

Most artists work with brushes, while Leonard works with extended palette knives. “I'm pulling paint, layering one layer at a time, which creates a sense of history in the painting. It's like looking at a fence post that's been repainted over a period of time. You can see the different colors and layers." In art-speak, this geometric depth of ground is known as 'push-pull.' What first appears as the 'background' may suddenly exceed to the forefront of the painting, while what a second ago seemed like the forefront, recedes. “Great art is such a surprise. It's so enchanting, so delightfully unexpected and unpredictable. In order to create that, you have to drop the concept of imposing what you think it should be, and allow the work to evolve in its own way. That requires all the skills of listening, allowing – learning to quiet that part of our mind that is constantly telling us how things should be. For me, that's the essence of creativity."

“Leonard's compositions are non-representational and move the viewer's eye vertically or horizontally across the space. This basic movement is complicated by layers of dropped, speckled, and fragmented colors that infuse not only a rich language of color, but also a visual history left to be discovered by the eye as it moves across the surface. Leonard's inventive layering process results in heavy impasto, or textured surfaces with a glossy, wet shine, making them particularly beautiful when seen in person." – Urban Tulsa Weekly, 2010

“There can be thirty or forty layers in one painting, creating the feeling of a 'waterfall.' As a final touch, Leonard employs a technique he calls 'sgraffito' – scraping lines through the upper layers, so the colors of the ground layers show through. It's a technique that demands courage and conviction; one misstep can destroy an entire painting." – Art writer, critic, and curator Dallas Faulkner