Animal world by Lesley Harrison (45 works)

Разрешение картинок от 1024x768px до 1024x768px

American artist Leslie Harrison has been painting horses and other animals for twenty-six years, capturing their personality, grace and strength. She uses pastel colors in her painting.

Leslie Harrison spent her childhood in Sacramento. Living on a farm, admiring nature and its inhabitants, especially horses, she picked up brushes and pencils at a very young age. “At school, I was often called to the principal because instead of listening to the teacher, I drew horses in class,” she laughs. After working as a nanny, by the age of fourteen the girl had saved enough money to buy her first horse. Leslie will never forget how she rode her without a saddle, how she bathed her, how she stayed to sleep in the stable, just to be closer to her horse.

After graduating from high school, Harrison moved to Arizona. One day, while wandering around the market, she saw pastel colors. At that time, few artists worked with pastels, but Leslie, as soon as she tried them, realized that she had found herself, and established herself in this opinion, selling her first painting to a man who fell in love with this work at first sight. By 1983, she had written enough to do nothing else.

When talking about exhibitions during an interview, Leslie says the following: “As soon as I come to a gallery and offer to exhibit my work, they immediately ask me what kind of paints I use. When I answer that I paint with pastels, they immediately lose all interest and don’t even want to look at my paintings. One day I decided to say that I work with oil paints and pastels. I was asked to show only the oil painting, but I brought both. When they saw my pastels, everyone trembled!” Even now, seventeen years later, it is still a struggle, although not as difficult. For art lovers, pastels are not as close as oil paints, but people can't get past what Leslie paints.

Harrison has received numerous awards for her excellence and was recently recognized for the third time by the West Coast Pastel Association for her contributions to the arts. She is also a member of the American Pastel Society.

Leslie lives in northern California with her husband, sculptor John Keller, and nine cats.

Harrison has been painting for twenty-six years. In painting, she embodies all her love for animals, emphasizing their individuality, grace and strength.