August 25 – September 30, 2012
Melanie Leslie, “Secrets of Tylsen,” 2009, mixed media.
HILLERY COMMUNITY GALLERY
A horse enthusiast, artist Melanie Wade Leslie felt immediately connected to the Blue Rider movement and the equine paintings of early 20th c. artist Franz Marc. Marc used symbolic and often monochromatic color schemes to depict, what he viewed to be, the purest form of creation.
Inspired by a 2008 trip to Germany, Leslie uses contemporary media to combine her own photographs of ancient castles and horses to create otherworldly places. Similar the artists of the Blue Rider, Leslie exploits the tension between the spiritual and physical world. Though her photographs are of real horses and real places, they are digitally manipulated so that the viewer could only believe that the images come from an imaginary or ghostly source.
Franz Marc executed colorful and spiritually-charged animal paintings between 1911 and 1914. Leslie’s interest in the Blue Rider is especially apropos as 2012 commemorates this three-year span of expressive blue, red, and yellow horses.
Melanie Leslie is an art teacher at Klein Oak High School and was a longtime art professor at Houston Baptist University. A native Texan, she holds a BFA in Painting from Sam Houston State University and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Houston. Her printmaking work has been exhibited all over the world and she is a popular juror for art leagues in the Greater Houston and surrounding area.