Magali Leonard
Crossing 1, 2013, Acrylic on Canvas, 31.5” x 31.5” and
31.5’’x 15’’, $8500
Colorfield poured paint diptych with explosive white and blue colors with black, gray background and yellow white sky
Magali Leonard’s “Openings” series of acrylic paintings are invitations. They propel us into pictorial universes in which the beholder is beckoned and beseeched to bear witness. In experiencing the artist’s surfaces, her markings and ovoid shapes, what we sense and feel is flux, the very nature of beholding and of becoming, at once anticipated and then withdrawn. The principle that underpins Leonard’s apparent fealty to exploring the dialectical fluctuations of appearance and dis-appearance, of integration and dis-integration, of ceasings and beginnings in her work is the principle of revelation. Leonard also skillfully pours her pigments to create veils of colors to, in her words, “stir and wake up the space and spacings of light” that permeate each painting. Transparency and opacity, through pouring, are mixed and matched by the artist, coloristically, to convey the presence of prima materia—the formative elemental condition leading to alchemical alteration, change, and ultimately, transformation.