Leslie Lerner's paintings depict landscapes with figures and other Images arrayed to tell
stories, typically part of several long running series, "My Life in France", "A Poor Boy's Tale" and
now "My Life in America". They contain hints of such Influences as Breugel, Turner, Goya and
particularly, Watteau. One also sometlmes thinks of the tongue-in cheek humor of the
contemporary conceptual master John Baldessari and the mystery of the legendary film maker
Alfred Hitchcock. They really reflect a highly complicated, fertile imagination and transport the
viewer into a world replete with references to how life might have been lived and how it is lived
today.
But the work is uniquely his; no one is creating paintings like these. They are usually acrylic
and other media, exquisitely crafted, on canvas, panel, paper and sometimes small pieces of
copper; handsome and compelling.
Lerner's art is in the collections of the Norton Gallery of art of Palm Beach, the San Francisco
Fine Art Museum, the Oakland and Scottsdale Museums, the Kohler art center in Sheboygan,
Wisconsin, the De Siasset Museum of Santa Clara, Stanford University' Museum of Art, the
Universities of Missouri and Wisconsin, the Ringling Museum, the Corcoran and National
Galleries,of Art in Washington, and the Museum of Modern Art In New York. His work was
featured in one- person exhibits at the Tampa Museum of Art In 1995 and at the Greenville
(S.C) County Museum of Art in 2000. "The Man with the Wooden Arm: The Imagined City", a
multimedia exhibition Including paintings, three dimension architectural forms, prints,
drawings and text, was featured at the University of South Florida's Contemporary Art Museum,
the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, and the Palo Alto Art Center in 1999.
Lerner was an Instructor at the Fine Arts Department at the Ringling
School of Art and Design.
*Memoriam of Mr. Lerner's passing. Here >
"A profusion of styles often reflects lack of focus. In Mr Lerner's case, the medley is part of
the mission, which is to distIll a sense of place-maybe even of home- from a land that is vast,
various forbidding and inhospitable. This might not be our America, but it Is Mr Lerner's.
Therein lies the cause of his ambivalence and the despondent pull of his art."
Mario Naves
The New York Observer, January 12, 2004 |