Cambridge Artist receives Gottlieb Grant
CAMBRIDGE, NEW YORK Artist Leslie Parke has recently been awarded a $25,000 Individual Support Grant from the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation of New York, honoring her extensive career as a professional painter. This grant is awarded each year to twelve artists worldwide who have devoted their lives to developing their art and have maintained a mature intellectual, technical and creative artistic development for a minimum of 20 years.
"Making art is a way for me to both experience and comment on exiting art," says Parke. "My early work was all about appropriation, working with images from Matisse, Ingres and Giotto. Now art historical references are just the filter through which I see the world."
In her current series, Parke creates abstract compositions from real subject matter, drawn from life. Her subjects - water, trees, crystal, china, recycled bales of paper and cans - become vehicles for shape, color, space and light. She employs monumental scale, all-over composition, and gestures that assert the surface of the painting. Painted in oil on linen or canvas, some as large as 60" x 70", her paintings, when viewed up-close, appear to be merely flecks of paint. From a distance, they look photo-realistic.
Adolph Gottlieb began his career as an artist in New York in the 1920’s, becoming one of the small group of artists who initiated the movement known as Abstract Expressionism and achieving artistic and financial success for his work.
Gottlieb had several friends and colleagues who, as artists, were less fortunate. Despite their artistic achievements, they were not able to support themselves through the sale of their art or related work so Adolph and his wife Esther would often help them out when times were hard or when someone was in serious need. It was in that spirit that Adolph left instructions in his will that a foundation be created to benefit “mature, creative painters and sculptors.” Since 1976, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation has been making Individual Support Grants to painters, sculptors and printmakers as part of Adolphe and Esther Gottlieb's continuing legacy, reflecting their dedication to assisting individual artists worldwide.
Leslie Parke earned her Bachelors and Masters Degrees at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, and participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She has been a recipient of the Lila Wallace - Reader’s Digest grant as artist-in-residence at the Claude Monet Foundation in Giverny, France, and the George Sugarman Foundation Grant, among others. Her exhibits include the Williams College Museum of Art, the Museum of the Southwest, Midland, Texas, the Fernbank Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work is in numerous corporate and private collections. Her paintings are currently on exhibit in Toronto, Canada, Houston and Dallas Texas, and Orlando, Florida.
Leslie Parke will be one of 15 artists opening the doors to her studio in Cambridge, New York for the third biennial Open Studios of Washington County in July. For more information, visit the Open Studios website at www.StudioTour.org and Leslie Parke's website at www.LeslieParke.com.
