ARTIST STATEMENT

Leah Macdonald makes her portraits into artifacts, one-of-a-kind conceptions that suggest the imperfection and multiplicity of memory. The heart of her mixed media work, a poignant sense of revisitation and return. Her passion is sharing her art and creativity with others through teaching workshops, art exhibitions and her prolific internet portfolios. Her new technique, “photogestic”, is the fruition of all her years of experimenting with altered surface analog photography and mixing media. It combines her three skills in art: photography, collage and encaustic painting. When transforming photographs from slivers of reality to complete fantasy, she expresses the tales of womanhood. She uses collage to place her figures in new and surreal environments. Her intuition with encaustics allows beeswax to embellish and veil her models. She carefully draws on the wax to decorate and control the visibility of the subject. Layering these mediums by manipulating surface texture and color grants her the ability to express her imagination and bring her art vision to life.

 She was born in Philadelphia, she attended college in San Francisco and then went on to receive her MFA in Photography from the California College of Art. She enjoyed a long and varied career path within the arts:commercial photography, professional analog printer and college professor. Currently she lives in Philadelphia and teaches workshops and  middle school children in art and makes and shows her artwork.