Leslie Fenton

The work in this show mines properties of limited materials—paper, pigment, and blade--to engage striking internalized imagery, gathered mostly during time spent around rocks by water. I’ve generated paper matter for constructing images with opposed pairings: disjointed and connected, weathered and freshened, torn and whole, tattered and new, suppressed and exuberant—all abundant in Maine coastal waters and at pond edges and stream banks in local Pennsylvania woods and arboreta.

A matrix of invented marks, impressed or carved into pigmented cotton linter, becomes the ground for a studio exploration, different from but equivalent to one in the wilder world. Paper scorings and striations mimic rock face and sea wrack, cuspid and broken forms recall crustacean exoskeletons, and concentric circles suggest time-lapse star tracks, tree cross-sections, and pond disturbances. Shallow 3D layerings convey the compression of time, and carved-and-peeled pigment layers reveal a suppressed light in atmospheres tending toward night, dusk, and winter overcast.

Waiting for each of these pieces to coalesce into an image, built on selected motifs, recapitulates the experience of waiting for a chosen place to reveal its essence.