LESLEY RAESIDE | MELANIE’S OFFICE
October 13 - December 6, 2024
I use simple, geometric shapes centered in the foreground, often repeated in painting after painting. The repetition of form allows for the elements of color and light, surface and space, form and dispersion, to interact in subtle ways. My paintings are about energy and frequency. They are intuitive and at the same time, they are procedural.
Repetition is also analogous with the use of mantras to quiet the mind and direct us inward, potentially towards deeper states of consciousness. The paintings hold the space between me and the viewer; between energy and its potential for transmutation. Words, thoughts, memories and emotions have their limitations and can be influenced by our agendas, but there is a pure and unequivocal truth, an authenticity about energy that is absolute.
Lesley Raeside graduated from Glasgow School of Art, in her native Scotland, with a degree in Graphic Design. She began painting shortly after in a collective studio in the city’s east end and eventually became one of three founding members of Transmission, an artist-run gallery in Glasgow. She curated exhibitions and showed her own work, her first paintings, at Transmission. A decade after graduating as a design student, she won a scholarship to Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. She moved to New York City afterward, to a studio on the Lower East Side, part of Empire State College’s Studio in New York City program. Her first solo exhibition, Four Paintings took place in 2019 at the National Exemplar Gallery in New York, and a second, Meditations, at the gallery’s Iowa location the following year. This is her second exhibition with 57W57Arts in New York City - the first, Muted Geometry, took place in 2023.
PROJECT SPACE
LESLEY RAESIDE | Muted Geometry: Paintings 2008-2020
March 5 - April 7, 2023
VIEW EXHIBITION
"I paint on small boards prepared with smooth, chalk-like surfaces that soak up layers of densely pigmented color. The white ground persists despite the opacity of the paint and allows a sense of light to come through. The finished surface is important to me and tends to be absent of brushstrokes or gestures of any kind. I work slowly, often on the same group of paintings for many months.
My paintings are intuitive but they are also procedural. Usually there's a single, abstract, geometric shape in the foreground, sometimes appearing in the same position in painting after painting. The repetition of the form prioritizes the elements of color and light, surface and space. It also affords me the freedom to focus on other areas that interest me more, such as the building up of color until the painting has the kind of depth, emotionally and energetically, that I want to convey. I tend to work on several paintings at the same time, often using the same range of colors in each.
This kind of repetitive action is important in a practical sense but it is also important conceptually. Repetition is analogous with the use of mantras to help quiet the endless, habitual fluctuations of thought and direct us inward, potentially towards deeper states of energy and consciousness. My paintings are about connecting with this energy, this potential, this light. They hold the space between me (the painter), and the viewer and become quiet places for the mind, and the eye to rest.
The above describes the challenge and the process. The reward is experiencing how a painting can change the way you feel when you stand in front of it." -LR
Lesley Raeside graduated from Glasgow School of Art with a degree in Graphic Design. Shortly after, she was instrumental in starting the artist run gallery Transmission in Glasgow's East End. This inspired her to start painting and within a few years she built up a portfolio of work which brought her to the United States in 1990. She was supported by travel bursaries from the Scottish Arts Council, Scottish Trade Union Congress and a generous scholarship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She moved to New York City in the autumn of 1990, directly after that summer in Skowhegan. She had a studio on the Lower East Side for a year under the auspices of the State University of New York’s Studio Semester in New York City program.
Holly Block included her sewn muslin work in a group show, Scratching the Surface, at Art in General in 1997. Paola Morsiani curated a group exhibition which included one of her large paintings on muslin with smaller sewn work for PS122 Gallery in 1998. The exhibition was entitled Unbroken and it traveled to Art and Idea in Mexico City. Max Henry included her paintings in the show Anatomy/Intellect for Stefanelli Exhibition space in New York and Elyse Goldberg included her in the exhibition Souvenirs/Documents: 20 Years of PS122 Gallery in 1999.
In February of 2019, she had her first solo exhibition at the National Exemplar Gallery in New York entitled Lesley Raeside: 4 Paintings 1999-2018 and another solo exhibition Lesley Raeside : Meditations at The National Exemplar’s location in Iowa City in the spring of 2020.
Sue and Al Ravitz included a painting in the Small Paintings Show at 57W57Arts in 2023, and an exhibition of her paintings in their gallery’s Project Space opens on March 5th of 2023.