Gladness fails from the hearts of men: prothonotary warbler Painting

Born July 2, 1966 in Washington, DC, Leah MacFarlane currently lives and works in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Art is the thing which allows us to make meaning of the meaningless. Through art, I have explored the tensile connections between the disparate and the similar. Art is the datum to which all the motley information of my life attaches itself, and it is the medium through which I explore contradictory fascinations with intellectual rigor and the glut of sensuality that defines contemporary culture. Evolution, the secret languages of mathematics and biology , the irresistible seduction of promises of a better existence are all ideas which I explore through art.

In my current body of work, I am combining text, both legible and illegible, from academic and scientific sources as well as from advertisements and flyers, and imagery of animals and animal parts with images and formulas from the world of biochemistry. I am working in oils, on wood panel, usually in a diptych or triptych format. The juxtaposition of texts and images, of sacred scientific language and profane advertising lingo, and of separate panels creates a visual tension which it is up to the viewer to resolve. Through this juxtaposition I am attempting to explore the commonalities between such seemingly disparate areas as the historical drive to document and catalogue flora and fauna during the 18th century, and the current drive to identify and map the edges of knowledge at a molecular level. The contemporary cultural lures of advertising slogans poignantly highlight the fleeting nature of all the texts, and the seductive appeal of the search for truth, which lies tantalizingly behind these secret languages