Lesley Vance has a highly personal and contemporary approach to painting, revisiting traditional genre of the still life in the form of exquisite abstractions. Having reproduced compositions of natural forms that she creates in her studio, she then works the paint into intimate luminous shapes wet-on-wet, often against darkened backgrounds. Vance works in both oil on linen and watercolours and has said of her work: “I am constantly disguising and adding information, masking figuration, and opening and closing spaces in the canvas until the composition behaves in a way that challenges the paintings hanging on the wall next to it.” The paintings record the transformation process, the gestures and the materiality of the paint, allowing the memory of Vance’s intense engagement with the temporary fluid state to emerge.

Solo exhibitions include the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, 2012, and Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, 2012. Group shows include Painter Painter at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2013. Lesley Vance’s work was presented in the Whitney Biennale, New York in 2010. She was first presented at Xavier Hufkens in a group show in 2011.

Lesley Vance was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, in 1977. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

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