Monday January 30th, 2023
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM EST (Zoom)
Well known in the Hudson Valley for her passionate mystical artwork, Leslie Bender has exhibited widely in the region since 1989, the year of her first one-woman exhibition at the James Cox Gallery in Woodstock. She has had political prints exhibited in both the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Downtown in New York City, as well as museums throughout the United States.
Leslie graduated from Pratt Institute in 1976, and soon began a career in murals, teaching students in the Brooklyn school system. She continued to work as a mural painter in New Jersey with the CETA program in 1979, and then with CityArts Workshop, Manhattan, until 1983.
Bender moved to the Catskill Mountains in 1986, supplementing her personal art creation by painting sets for regional theaters. She has exhibited extensively in Hudson Valley galleries and regional museums, and curated an Elder Women Speak of Domestic Violence Art Exhibition at GreenKill Gallery, Kington, in 2019. Her new imagery is joyous and mystical, following a mystical transformation in 2019.
Read more at https//:www.lesliebender.com
““My paintings and drawings address the construct of the mind and how it interprets social experience. We are affected by reams of delusion we are only dimly aware exist. The thrall of the past subverts our objectivity, creating a seething, theatrical confluence of imaginings that beleaguer us and transmute our objectivity. By manipulating formal paint qualities, overlapping and interrupting representational imagery with density, layering, intensity, light and darkness, I create a visual tapestry that evokes the effect old emotional content and past illusions have on our current perceptions.””
Alisa Phillips is a multidisciplinary artist. As a performer, she has presented original work internationally (PS1, Harkness Center for Dance, HERE, Williamstown Theater Festival, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jerusalem Museum, Lincoln Center out of Doors, Tower Theatre, Dora Stratou, Museum of Delphic Festivals) More recently, she has turned her focus to representational art. She is now an emerging portrait painter of animals and people in the Hudson Valley. She believes in art as a powerful agent of personal transformation and collective evolution and that beauty reensouls the world. To learn more and see examples of her portfolio, please visit her website at alisaphillips.art