Leslie Lew

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As a graduate student from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I was invited to participate in a program called "Semester in New York City" run by SUNY. It was much like the Whitney Museum program, and allowed painters like myself a studio, and critiques by major artists. I ended up staying in New York, where I had my first solo show in the 80's during the East Village Art Movement. My work has always embraced throwaway imagery- specifically of mundane printed matter, from comic books, elementary school text books to ad illustrations. It also explores American culture and our tastes- good and bad.
My painting technique is like no other and is called "Sculpted Oils" They are really between painting and sculpture, in which the surface is first built up with acrylic, and then painted again with thick impasto oil paint. This creates a surface that can be three inches thick. I recently developed a technique which represents a hybridization of my sculpted oils and digital printing which I call "Monotypes". I use a high resolution photograph of one of my sculpted oil paintings, which I print out on canvas. The digital really picks up all my swirls and surface, and when I repaint the surface with sculpted acrylic, it creates a "double sculpted" effect. This process has enabled me to make a print that is true to my sculpted technique.