Leticia Painting

Landing suddenly from the diversity and bustle of the NYC Metro area into an isolated Mountain Village in Vermont at the age of 6 was both traumatic and amazingly magical. My early artistic inclinations and expressions were actually presented on the slopes as performance in competitive Freestyle Skiing. This creative approach to life, athletics, and its collective social dynamics bled into other aspects of daily existence. For me I particularly loved drawing as a pastime. It became another form of escape and eventually became a means for me to improve my gamesmanship by learning body mechanics of skiing tricks and discovering figurative drawing by pausing our VCR and sketching it. Through sacrifice, I followed the template of steps to get to the highest levels of the sport while giving maximum creative effort to both innovate the sport and compete with the best in the world. My forced retirement from FIS World Cup Freestyle Skiing coincided with the moment when I was reaching my peak as an athlete. All my creative and competitive drive had nowhere to go at this point and so I directed these energies into becoming the best artist I could be. After finishing school and becoming a single dad I made a leap of faith that I estimated would benefit me and my family. I began my New York City residency with momentum and promise having experienced success with a solid run of high-end sales and a couple of small showings in exhibitions under my belt. Rather than play the gallery game - I decided to focus on production and personal development by distilling the methods I employed in order to find my artistic voice. Being a part of that place and time made me hyper-aware that art is what truly sustains me. Whether it be low or high brow tales of overcoming the odds; then falling and picking yourself back up again - my art reflects themes familiar to me that connect like patchwork. The interconnectedness of people and places through the passage of time and expressed by its institutions constitute the romance and lifeblood of this place. This is what California embodies to me at this point in time. It represents the rise and fall and rise of the American Dream. My work appears in the collections of 1(800)Flowers CEO Jim McCann and the late Unification Church founder Reverend Sun Myung Moon.