About: Artist Marietta Patricia Leis

BA Antioch College West in Los Angeles, CA,
MA University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM,
MFA in painting and drawing from the University of New Mexico

From writing and illustrating books as a child, to a love of dance and acting as she got older, Marietta Patricia Leis has had a number of artistic abilities. Yet nothing for her is as strong as her desire to always return to the creativity of painting. The atmosphere which she daily experiences forms the foundation of her inspiration. As a world traveler she releases the persona of a place or the energy of its people in her oil paintings. She prefers this search for deeper meaning from what she perceives around her to simply accepting “perceived realities.” Leis finds that her studio provides the seclusion she needs in order to return from the experience of travel and put into her paintings that which she experienced in the wider world.

My life has taken a deliberate turn in the last decade—more focused—intrigued by empty space, interested in the air between the notes. I try to move at an ant’s pace sometimes experiencing life as nothing more than a square foot of color. Palladio’s architecture where classicism represents a restraint holds a beauty that I now seek in my life and work. I dip my brush into my soul and paint what cannot be said. The glazes I use for translucency, the gradations for the subtle nuances of color, the monochromes for the stillness and the edges for “edginess.”

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