Current Artist Statement

​​Each spring semester I teach a course titled “Beyond Making: Strategies for Success” (longest course title!) which is a capstone professional practices course for our BFA & BA students. As I guide students through drafting and revising their artist statements, I often find myself revisiting my own writing. While some aspects of my work have remained steady since graduate school, other ideas have grown and changed. In the past couple of years I have returned to perceptually based looking and drawing/painting specific landscapes, now noted in this most recent iteration of my artist statement. And while I realize not a lot of people actually read artist statements, I find that if process my own ideas through writing, I am better prepared to talk about what I value, and why I make what I make.

My process begins with drawing outside, observing and absorbing nature. I feel like my eyes are getting a much-needed massage as I study the shifting light and fleeting shadows in the landscape. Recently, my goal has been to find and paint locations that are layered and complex, where the space can be stacked and compressed. These drawings become the source for thread paintings that I make in my studio with thin washes of acrylic paint and densely stitched cotton embroidery thread.  The resulting thread paintings are a synthesis of my perception, a study of the details of a particular place, and a celebration of the renewing power of nature. ~Heidi Leitzke

Other Pastures at The Delaware Contemporary

Other Pastures Group Exhibition at The Delaware Contemporary
September 8 - December 31, 2023 with Reception on Friday September 8 from 5 - 9 p.m., Gallery Talk at 6:30 p.m.

Curated by Chase Dougherty, Gretchen Hupfel Curator of Contemporary Art

“Imagination defies all bounds. The act of imagining can absorb us for a fleeting moment or capture an entire world through its physical creation. It is the critical ingredient of innovation, allowing for new possibilities and progression. We imagine because we are hopeful. We dream because we are eager. Other Pastures highlights four artists who are engaged in manifesting their imaginations based on their realities. These worlds reflect aspects of the artists themselves, allowing us insight into their individual practices.”

Participating Artists: Kiara Florez, Heidi Leitzke, Mike McConnell, Annette Monnier

“Mixed media artist Heidi Leitzke similarly constructs landscapes based on nature, however these inspirations manifest as illustrative, mindful spaces. Snapshots of intimate scenes are overgrown with lush flora that spread and sparkle across her surfaces. While personal to Leitzke, each work feels dreamlike and magically perceptive.”

Visit www.deconemporary.org for more information.

Summer Garden at Gross McCleaf

Summer Garden Group Exhibition at Gross McCleaf Gallery
July 5 - 29, 2023 with Reception on July 8 from 1 - 4 p.m.

“As the mid-summer heat settles upon us, let these works transport you from the Center City streets to the sanctuary of a summer garden. Each artwork offers a glimpse into the opulent colors, intricate patterns, and unique relationships that artists forge during the blazing days and suspended nights of summer.”

“Heidi Leitzke’s…works evoke magic and mystery. Leitzke’s diminutive acrylic and thread works are imaginative secret gardens with space for one. Her colorful threads articulate imagined memories, inviting viewers into natural settings that feel both familiar and elusive.”

Visit www.grossmccleaf.com for more information.

A Tune, Subtle and Vast opens Friday January 13, 2023

A Tune, Subtle and Vast is a two-person exhibition of recent work by artists Heidi Leitzke and Jon Weary. The title, inspired by writer and environmentalist Wendell Berry, alludes to the artists’ shared reflections on nature, seasonality, and nineteenth-century landscapes and material processes. A nuanced understanding of temporality and a reverence for the vastness of the natural world can be seen in both Leitzke’s and Weary’s works. For instance, Leitzke uses hand-held embroidery techniques to “paint” with thread in her works. In contrast to the traditional subjects and style of this craft, Leitzke depicts landscapes that are at once hauntingly beautiful and threateningly bound by the built environment. Similarly, Weary appropriates unpretentious cross-stitch patterns in his prints and paintings to question various approaches to abstract and agrarian representation. In addition to reclaiming and revising traditional “women’s work,” Weary and Leitzke work with and against the conventions of landscape to rediscover Pennsylvania-specific motifs and locations: orchards, islands in the Susquehanna, and Pennsylvania German folk art. Their works can be seen as radically nostalgic, as each artist offers new ways for connecting with the past and making sense of a rapidly changing environment.

Public event:

Meet the artists at the opening reception, held on Friday, January 13, 6-8 pm at Ejecta Projects. Visitors are invited to also attend the opening reception of Beautifully Broken, a juried exhibition on display at the Carlisle Arts Learning Center (CALC), 38 W. Pomfret St., Carlisle, 5:30-7:00 pm on January 13. The two opening events are coordinated for visitors to enjoy art in downtown Carlisle, PA. CALC is only a five-minute walk from Ejecta Projects. All events are free and open to the public.

About the artists:

Heidi Leitzke grew up in Wisconsin and lives and works in Lancaster, PA. She received a BA from Anderson University and MFA from Western Carolina University. Some of her first paintings were made in Corciano, Italy while studying abroad for a semester through American University’s Art in Italy program. Her desire to work from nature grew over the two summers she spent painting in the landscape with Stanley Lewis at Chautauqua School of Art. Leitzke is an Associate Professor of Art and Director of the Eckert Art Gallery at Millersville University.

Born in Carlisle PA, Jon Weary graduated from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University with a BFA in 2010. He has participated in residency programs at Hudson House and Mt Lebanon Shaker Museum in New York, the Vermont Studio Center, and Arquetopia Foundation in Puebla, Mexico. Jon’s work has been shown at Pressure Club Press, High Tide Gallery, Crane Arts, and the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, Able Baker Gallery in Portland, Maine, and Mountain Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. Jon is currently based in Philadelphia.

Thread Paintings and Works on Paper available at Gross Mc Cleaf Gallery

Click here to see Heidi’s work at Gross Mc Cleaf Gallery.

“Gross McCleaf Gallery has been a positive and enduring fixture in Philadelphia’s art scene for over half a century. With the mission of promoting established, mid-career, and emerging artists, GMG has provided a beautiful space for the exhibition of fine art in a convenient Center City location. The gallery features monthly exhibits in its three gallery spaces as well as on-site access to its extensive inventory. The welcoming staff at GMG is ready to provide information and guidance as you build your personal or corporate collection.”

Visit Gross Mc Cleaf Gallery in person, 127 S 16th St, Philadelphia, PA 19102.

A BRIDGE ACROSS, A PATH THROUGH catalog with essay by Bill Scott

Printed copies of catalog available by request.
Send an email including your name and mailing address to heidileitzke@gmail.com.

a bridge across, a path through

 a bridge across, a path through
new work by Heidi Leitzke

October 28 - December 10, 2021
Reception: October 28 from 4 – 7 p.m. with artist talk at 5 p.m.

Hess Gallery
Zug Memorial Hall
Elizabethtown College

I began my current body of work, a bridge across, a path through, in the summer of 2019 with a series of ink paintings made while watching the shifting light in the wooded lanes of Mount Gretna, PA. As I looked, I felt like my eyes were getting a much-needed massage. On these winding pathways, I composed images that captured the compressed space and dappled light of this landscape. Building on these ink drawings I started to create larger scale oil paintings, and richly layered thread paintings that furthered my exploration of bridges and paths in real and imagined landscapes. 

I have been thinking about how a bridge is literally a way to connect two sides, serving as a metaphor of connection between two people with different experiences or ideals. This was particularly poignant in the fall of 2020, as we were in the midst of a very divisive election season and people were separated by their beliefs. A path winding through a space symbolizes a journey, perhaps through the past two years, living through the pandemic. Now as we near the end, there is both joy and anxiety associated with re-emerging into the world. We are all trying to navigate our world that feels both familiar and forever changed.

 In an essay that accompanies the exhibition artist Bill Scott wrote, “The ensuing whimsy of Leitzke’s experiments make the viewer feel she is presenting the world to us with a childlike wonderment. It opens the door to what sets her apart from other landscape painters….A good memoirist can write a story that makes readers feel they too have a valuable story to tell and share. Leitzke paints in a way that makes me want to remain speechless so as to simply continue looking and to see how her images slowly unfold to reveal more than I see at first glance.”