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