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Artist
Background -
Leslie's
work is strongly influenced by the countryside in which
he grew up, on various farms in North Yorkshire. Born in 1957,
from
an early age he was always sketching and painting the
farm animals and rural landscape around him The idea of
becoming
a professional artist however, seemed a distant dream, too
unreal to seriously consider.
His
working life began first in the building trade as a joiner,
and then as a
mining electrician at Brodsworth Colliery near Doncaster,
South Yorkshire. The long dark shifts underground reawakened
his enthusiasm for the countryside - the colours texture and
atmosphere of light on the English landscape. Still with no
formal art training, he began again to sketch and paint whenever
he could, even sketching his fellow workers underground! With
confidence in his artwork growing slowly, he began to exhibit
and sell work at local exhibitions, and can still remember
his first exhibition sale, a small watercolour of a shooting
scene for £12.50!
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Leslie
would often travel to Leeds or York to visit exhibitions of work
by 'proper' artists, the Impressionists or the Pre Raphaelites -
artists whose work he had admired in books borrowed from the library
as a
teenager. Interestingly,
Leslie now wonders if seeing these works inspired him, or in fact
held him back somehow. For his thoughts when younger were often ;
these artists were so good, in their paintings you can feel the damp
in
the
air, almost see the trees swaying in a painted breeze, the landscape
so natural so bright - how could those colours have possibly come
from a paint tube! Then, on returning home to see your own dim, awkwardly
drawn efforts ' laughing' at you from the easel - what a let down,
what
a blow!
But reflects Leslie, there is something inside you, something that makes
you want to paint, to try again and again. Sometimes your work seems heavy
and laboured,
as if you are holding a brick in your hand, not an artists brush. But then
there are the good days - when a painting almost seems to paint itself !
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