Whirligig Painting

Leisa Rich was born and raised in Ontario, Canada, but spent most of her adult life living and working in the U.S. and traveling the world. In October 2020, Leisa returned to live permanently in Canada. Her home and studio/gallery is in a 98 year old farmhouse with recent modern additions, on 3 acres of Old MacDonald's Farm, on Howe Island, on the mighty St. Lawrence River. The island has no retail, no doctors, nothing but cottages, animals and birds, thousands of honking geese in the late fall and early spring, and is accessible only by ferry! It is to nature that Rich turns for much of her subject matter. Her destiny as a fiber artist began early with a satin trimmed blankie; Leisa had to run the satin through her fingers from one end to the other before she could fall asleep. As a child, she spent years in the hospital due to illness and deafness, dressing her Barbie and Ken in clothes her mother made. Tactile sensations were there even when sound and humans were not. Leisa is legally deaf. Rich is a very experimental artist working primarily with fibers and mixed media in 2D, sculptural, and installation formats, and incorporates 3D printing, laser engraving, and other unexpected techniques into her textural art works. She continuously explores new materials in unusual ways, and also builds her repertoire of innovative approaches by using old things in new ways. In addition, she creates viewer-interactive, participatory experiences. Rich offers viewers a magical place of wonder through works that have a storybook quality, and that sometimes invite and encourage interaction, or beckon the public to be co-creators. One of her favored techniques is free-motion machine embroidery -- a method of drawing and building texture using a sewing machine and thread -- as well as hand embroidery, sewing, dyeing, resin, painting and more. Rich holds Master of Fine Art- Fibers, Bachelor of Fine Art- Fibers, and Bachelor of Education in Art degrees, cum laude. She has exhibited in notable museums such as the Dallas Art Museum and Ogden Museum of Southern Art, in many galleries and arts centers, and featured in televised interviews and features. Her work is published in over 100 books, magazines and on-line publications. Leisa published a children's book in 2015 that features 52 dioramas she constructed of fiber techniques and materials, and in 2019, a series of How-To art books about Fosshape© that are available on www.blurb.com.