Leah Piepgras

b. 1970, Norman, ok
lives currently on the North Shore of Boston, MA


The act of creating is about looking for truths, not knowing the answers along the way.
My work focuses on extremes of being- the physical and the mental, anatomy and cognition. I am interested in the moments when they overlap and where they come apart. In paintings, I create spaces inhabited with pieces of bodies and depictions of thoughts where happiness, bliss, and euphoria are the proof of the soul. For me, the act of painting hovers on that edge between control and chaos.
In my paintings I think of thoughts as clouds and mists, and how, before you can grasp a full idea, they float away and all you are left with is a feeling, an intention. I don't think of these thoughts as lost though, because they float up into the air. I think of them in a constant state of visual change, with only the pithy truth of the idea remaining as the actual, physical, constant. I think of the bodies in my paintings in the same way, in a constant state of becoming, with shifts so subtle that you might always feel the same and, only by looking back, do you see the transformation.

A couple of years ago I read a rant by Roberta Smith (NY Times, 12/23/07) about ...