Leslie Bender Artist Satement 2023

My paintings and drawings address the construct of the mind and how it interprets social experience. We are affected by reams of delusion we are only dimly aware exist. The thrall of the past subverts our objectivity, creating a seething, theatrical confluence of imaginings that beleaguer us and obscure our objectivity. By manipulating formal paint qualities, overlapping and interrupting representational imagery with density, layering, intensity, light and darkness, I create a visual tapestry that evokes the effect of old wounds and past illusions on our current perceptions.
My art illuminates a deep psychological frontier, and so the periphery of circus, carnival, restaurant, beach and pool becomes the borderline for the unconscious. Humans and animals, existing in contexts rife with symbolic allusion, articulate this landscape. Morphed by time and space, they surge across the flat surface, emerging only to get lopped off or disappear as they reenact powerful, silent magnetic paradigms.
By making art, I pivot my own plethora of conflicting thoughts, emotions, fears and physical sensations into environments that evoke a sensational inner world, influencing the viewer to experience moods that mirror their own inner conflagration, opening awareness to a part of us we are oblivious to in our daily lives.