Paintings 2021
During the longueurs of pandemic time Leeanne Crisp moved in this series from the Classical restraint of circles – albeit of romantic roses with clearly delineated petals – into a Romantic release of free forms, with a dash of Classical rigour in glorious East Asian calligraphic paint splashes.
Her freely brushed forms in pinks, reds and even the occasional orange suggest organic likenesses, and often a right way up, leaving us to guess whether from the artist’s intentions or, like cloud shapes in the sky, from our own imaginings.
One shock in the latest works is the sheer genius in applying crinkled masses of gold leaf on top of the paint as spaced out framings or supports for those shapes, especially when the gold leaf changes colour from gold to yellow to green and back again as you move around.
As the artist heaved the large canvases that were not on the walls into view to establish their chronological order, I had the unusual experience of being knocked speechless – partly by all the hard-won knowledge and experience that must have enabled such bold experimentation, but mainly because the works themselves exude such an unassailable authority.
Roy Forward
18 April 2021
