ART
Rebecca Leveille
“Tuesday” REBECCA LEVEILLE “The End of Love”
Solo Exhibition – Exhibit Artwork, The Untitled Space Gallery, New York – May 2018
Boston inhabitant, Rebecca Leveille is a distinguished contemporary American artist who creates her paintings using figurative forms, images that hark to art historical sources and modern-day paintings. Inspired by masters who include Fragonard, Kara Walker, and Walter Robinson, Leveille creates her work through pictorial practices and inner mythologies, translating the artist’s unique subjects that are extracted from her imagination.
From the 90s until 2011, Leveille’s accomplishments working as an illustrator was thanks to the intriguing figures and drawings she artfully created. Leveille was the recipient of an array of awards, additionally being recognized as a special guest at various events throughout the United States, as well as in Japan, Australia, Italy, Spain, and France. Within her artistic journey that investigates the poetic versus the literal, the painter reconnoiters an assortment of notions which include the female gaze, sensuality, media imagery and social phenomena that occupy the art world.
Materials are fundamental components that contribute to Leveille’s arts – paints are thick and buttery thus create the assertive wide lines expressed in her choice of oils, whilst washes drift below impastos and pencil and graphite powder contribute to the marks and streaks.
“Wednesday”
“Thursday”
“A distinctly female gaze is something that matters to me a great deal in this body of work” explains Leveille. “I use male forms to examine object and subject of desire, in ways that have been primarily done with the female nude form. Men paint sexy women, women while making feminist art, paint sexy women. I would like to expand on this by including the male figures that are overtly sexual and speak to female fantasy (and critique it) as a feminist statement in the work. This is exemplified in “The End of Love” painting within my current exhibition at the Untitled Space.”
Painting with passion and always illustrating a captivating gaze, Leveille’s latest body of work delivers a rich internal discourse embodying the themes of sex and myth within contemporary culture. You can see Leveille’s groundbreaking exhibition “The End Of Love” at the Untitled Space in TribeCa from May 2nd- May 13th.
Words by Katie Farley
“Friday”