Lesley Slight
Lesley Slight (1939 – 2024)
“My work is focused on the landscape of West Dorset, where I have lived and worked since 1973 in a remote and very rural situation. This landscape, with its secret valleys, old woods and rounded hills, is the focus and catalyst for everything that I do and is absolutely central to my work. It has an ancient and primordial being, and a timeless quality not quite of this century –so much of it seems relatively untouched by changes evident elsewhere.”
Exhibition: On Land and Sea at The Art Stable
Much has been said about Slight’s reinvention of the Dorset landscape: she knews her subject extremely well because she transforms it with such insight and clarity.
Slight’s paintings tell us that she loves remoteness and the countryside; she is fascinated by the far horizon and takes us there by unravelling the valleys, hills, bushes, spinneys, the unfashionably small fields and fat hedges, from beneath our feet. We are led on the whim or an ancient path pinned here and there by a brave, single tree. Is that dance of light or canopy of leaves a signal to rest, the city equivalent of a street lamp or covered doorway? Or is it a warning, - have you stumbled into an unfinished story, a haunted world you don’t quite recognise? Were you meandering, relaxed in your day-dreaming, or were you already on the run….
“For me it has ever changeable moods, sometimes welcoming, and at times disturbing and forbidding. It is these very moods which fascinate and intrigue, dependent as they are upon two crucial and interchangeable factors –light and weather. The time of day itself will present a different aspect according to the season, and the weather, rain or sun, mists or brightness, at dawn, dusk, or night - each one is capable of transforming a familiar view into a strange unknown world. It is this mystery that I constantly seek to investigate and explore in my work, and is pivotal to its continuing development.“
Her uncompromising use of opposites; wilderness as sanctuary or menace, the calm with disquiet, the chance-like sitting comfortably with the more contrived, the burst of light and plunging darkness have all seduced us. We will have to think more about what we feel when we are out in nature. She gives us no choice because you can never look at Slight’s work and be totally at ease. The sharp line of the sea on the horizon can cut towards the land then stop, strangely mollified by the lightness of her brush, the soft light, the unearthly silence. The skies are never completely clear in Slight’s work.
Text by Kelly Ross, The Art Stable
Here’s Lesley’s Website.
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