Shantideva Meditation Center

Watercolor on Arches Paper, 20" x 16"

Valued at $150.00

 

Of the creative process used to create this drawing, Leslie says:

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"My drawings are about how form and emptiness are interdependent. The use of drawing around my hand is a form of meditation as well as signature. It is utterly ordinary to use one's hands, and at the same time, in each unique moment i've found myself ignoring my hands or using them unproductively. In ancient cave paintings, a mythic power exudes from marks made by the people who created them. This power resonates with ideas of intention, possessiveness, or determination. The abilities in my hands, of power and responsibility are a contemplation for me. it seems to take a long time to create and a brief moment to destroy.
 

By creating ambiguities in perception and practicing present moment awareness, manifested is a record of the process of living and passing through choices,how i use my hands, beauty, and decay. That simple journey is a great and inspiring mystery to me."

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About Leslie Wagner:

Leslie Wagner creates art on and in multiple mediums, and has been exhibiting since 1991. She graduated from Parsons School of Design in New York City, and studied at Parsons in Paris. Her creative process has been informed by meditation in various spiritual traditions and as such she has traveled extensively on pilgrimage to natural and urban landscapes. Her work brought her to a residency at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Oregon, where the devoted meditation practice distilled interests in making art concerned with impermanence, and the direct experience of each moment. As a practicing Zen Buddhist, she investigates this intention in her paintings by the dispersion of material, content, light and by the activity of painting itself. Interests in Quantum Physics as connected to Zen practice also inform her work, particularly the reduction of the most basic bits of everything, full and empty at the same time. Leslie Wagner was awarded a Scholarship to an artist residency in the Azore Islands, and received a Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center. She was born on 14th street in New York City.