Booth 803
(See map below)
About the Artist
Leslie Peebles is an ardent environmentalist and naturalist who connects her audience to the flora and fauna of the southern landscape. The south's vanishing wilderness, from the Everglades to the Dismal Swamp, has become a big source of inspiration for Leslie's work. Her primary medium is printmaking; wood-cut and linocut relief print, letterpress, and collagraph. Carved blocks, cast letters, and sealed collages are inked and “impressed” into paper on an etching press or a letterpress machine. Nature serves as a living metaphor for the connectedness of all things; internal, external, and universal. Land, trees, and animals are projections and identifiers of self and the universe. The atmospheric layering of the pieces evokes the multi-dimensional layering of our experience and understanding of reality.
Pieces begin with a combination of drawings and paintings done directly from nature, memory, and imagination, and photographic imagery. The long, arduous process of carving becomes a meditation on that experience and the intrinsic beauty of the relief print amplifies the subject through energetic and radiant line work. The blocks are printed on an etching press and color is added with watercolor, encaustic medium, or through reduction and/or multi-block printmaking. Some pieces are applied to gessoed wood panels and an encaustic medium is applied. Encaustic is the oldest painting medium that uses a binder. It was first used in Egypt 3500 years ago as Egypt was the first civilization to domesticate bees. Encaustic is beeswax with Damar Resin added to harden it; then pigment can be added. It is an excellent protector and preserver of the prints. Lives and works in Gainsville, FL.
