Chasing Time by Diana Leslie is the next exhibition at the Northlight Gallery Stromness from Monday 14th  to  Monday 21st October, 10.30am  – 5pm, Closed Sunday

Chasing Time by Diana Leslie.

The art world concerns its self with the zeitgeist. (A sense or a question of what is ‘now’). Figurative realism, painting from life, in one way is animated by the instability of life and light in front of our eyes and in another way turns its back on the canons of progress in contemporary art looking more at the tradition of Scottish realism. Like Hockney I’m excited by the process of ‘eye balling”. Looking and looking and painting and trying. We unwrap a tulip. It is as rigid as a crunchy. It relaxes and moves and as it gets closer to not existing at all; it gets much more beautiful. I also paint my local landscape. That has become a bit more challenging in an era of big coaching and cruise tourism. But I’m looking at light, chasing it.

Another strand to my work is printmaking. Print has another relationship with drawing. Big flat shapes of colours, how a repeat might work. In every instance printmaking asks that you look at one angle. Perhaps you have to turn the landscape back to front to make it read right or make it all about line or all about shape. So I’ve been making massive lampshades with my cat all over them and a tea towel called “ladybirds”. Printmaking offers a different set of rules for every kind of print.

So it can sound like I do a bit of everything. So be it.