Lesley Patterson-Marx

lesleypattersonmarx.com

 

Through the process of making prints, drawings, artist’s books and mixed-media work, I express my sense of wonder at the connections between human life and the abundant beauty of the natural world, my sense of awe at the discovery of order within chaos, and my perception of the sublime mysteries that lie within the mundane.

The subject matter in my work arrives from the process of collecting. In poring over old magazines, sifting through jars of buttons, arranging stacks of sepia and black-and-white photographs, and collecting bug-eaten leaves, four-leaf clovers and cicada wings that I find on daily walks, I arrive at the images and textures that move me to make something more of them than they could be on their own. I am drawn to these things for their ephemeral qualities. Communing with them brings me comfort. Arranging them within my work reminds me that I am a part of something familiar and cyclical that would otherwise seem vast and unknowable.

In my most recent work, I use printmaking as a form of collage, cutting up textures and images from larger prints that I have made. I then sew them together to form quilt-like pieces that are meditations on the interconnectedness of all things, silhouettes from anonymous photographs of a bygone era, on which the viewer is free to cast his or her own narrative. My work often calls upon traditionally feminine craft mediums. Using thread, textiles and decorative pattern, I am able to engage in repetitive work as a practice through which I can enter a state of mindful reflection.

The process of creating my work relies on both intuition and careful planning. I often allow combinations of images and textures to occur intuitively at the beginning, finding meaning within ambiguity that could not emerge from logic or reason alone. I refine ideas and processes as I go. Sometimes I begin a work after months of careful consideration and planning, allowing the idea to change and grow as I become immersed in the process of working. Each idea leads to another, and within every piece is a new discovery.  

 

Nashville, Tenn.-based artist Lesley Patterson-Marx was born in 1975 in Louisville, Ky. She received her BA in Fine Art from Murray State University in 1997 and her MFA from The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 2001. She has exhibited her artist’s books, prints and mixed-media works in galleries, art centers, colleges and universities across the U.S., including Cynthia Broan Gallery in New York City; Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wis.; Berkeley Art Center in Berkeley, Calif.; and Frist Center for Visual Arts, TAG Art Gallery and Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville. Her work has been featured in national publications, including Craft and ReadyMade, and 500 Handmade Books, Voume 2 . She is a founding member and Education Coordinator at Platetone: Printmaking, Paper, and Book Arts in Nashville, TN. Lesley works as a teaching artist and illustrator, having taught at Watkins College of Art Design, Vanderbilt University’s Sarratt Art Studios, Art & Soul, and University School of Nashville.