"Yosemite 42" Collage

Leishman grew up in Georgia, moving to the Los Angeles area after completing her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Originally trained as a photographer, she now works in collage.  Using both traditional and non-traditional materials, including fragments of old projects, Leishman explores the dichotomies she witnesses. It is the push and pull between two ideas that intrigues her most, the animating tensions between destruction and creation, expansion and contraction, explosion and implosion — and religion and science.

Collage fits the exploration and expression of these ideas. In collage the artist divides and connects. She takes fragments and places them, brings them into new relationships, to make something whole. She states, “Starting from what I already had in my studio, I gather fragments of old projects and give them new life. In bringing these elements of my studio together, I witness and partake in the ideas: Creation from destruction. Creation from chaos. Creation from the elements.”

She has shown her work nationally, won awards, and taught fine art at universities in Utah and California. Her work is beloved by designers such as Leanne Ford. She recently exhibited in Downtown LA and recently had a solo show at Granary Arts, titled “Heaving into Mountains”. She recently began a collaboration with evolutionary biologist Steven Peck on a body of work investigating the loss we will continue to experience with climate change.