Kim Leonard
PJ : Could you share with us some of the preparation that went into this painting? Did you sketch this on location?
KL: “April in South Dakota” is about a culmination of memories for the trip that I took to the Black Hills and Badlands region of South Dakota. This is one of my favorite places to visit that is about a 9 hour drive from Minnesota. Several of the images represent actual places while other forms were created as I worked with the piece. I utilize a personal method of imprinting stimuli to my memory from specific locations and then pausing in my mind to reflect and nearly meditate on the stimuli for a few moments so that I may take that reflection back to the canvas. I have been working with this imprinting method for many years and it has just evolved with me. Recently the images are reflecting more of the stimuli itself rather than the abstract representation of it. I brought all of my canvases with me on this specific trip with the intention of working more plein-air. The work however, didn’t formulate in my mind until I returned home. There is simply an over stimulus occurring there for me and it made it difficult to sit down and paint. This is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much there.
PB: What do you think of Takashi Murakami’s paintings? I read he draws in his computer with a vector program and then hires someone else to do the actual painting. Now your painting here is in acrylic. These shape contours appear carefully painted to me. To you, how important is the medium?
KL: I believe that each artist finds their own way to the creation of work and the theories and belief that go behind them are as different as each person in the world. It is truly the path to get there that is exciting. The medium to get there is another story. I fought utilizing acrylic for many years and felt I could only communicate my thoughts through the beauty of oil paint. I would today only find frustration if I attempted the manner in which I paint now with oils. I feel that my work has evolved as I worked with acrylic. The blending and pushing of the medium is no longer attractive physically or visibly. I feel it is at its strongest use when I can separate the planes and the areas with the forms. Acrylic dries quite fast and it has lead me into having very accurate lines. This has caused me to complete a painting in nearly triple the time as an oil painting as I have become so specific.
PB: It’s surprising that you are able to deliver such great distance in this series using such flat shapes. Was that important? Did you think about it, or did you know ahead of time that you would capture such expansive spaces with flat shapes? Do you tend to focus your attention on the surface, the space in the picture, or some combination?
KL: I feel this entire series is representing an evolving style. The work I was doing only a few months before was more of a bridge to this current style. I had been working toward such a flatness with my work in 2005. Now perhaps the size of the pieces themselves, being much smaller than work that I typically do, I wanted to feel more information and depth. Perhaps it has more to do with being out on vast landscapes. In the state of 10,000 lakes and trees abound it is difficult to see vast distances.
PB: Now that it’s finished, do you have more of a relationship with the actual place you painted, the painting itself, or are you altogether somewhere else as you experience this painting now?
KL: Because these pieces are fairly recent, I definitely have a strong association with them. It takes me nearly a decade to separate myself from the work that I have done. Even then, so much of my work is based upon an experience that it helps me to remember it even more. It is generally the strong relationship that I have with a place that creates the need to paint it. For example, I lived in Finland for a while during college and the work simply transformed me as an artist because of the impact the location had on me. This impact is what gives me the most momentum for creating work.
