Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w. d i s t i n c t ly m o n ta n a . c o m 39 you haVE SEVEral quotES on your wEB SItE, But thE onE By JaCkSon PollaCk SEEMS to rESonatE wIth your work. "EVEry good PaIntEr PaIntS what hE IS." what doES that MEan to you? ere is a certain honesty I strive for with my work. You can follow fads, you can try to cater to the art market, you can try to please the critics. ere is pressure as a professional artist to do all these things, but they are bad choices. I see things a certain way, experience the visual world in a singular way, and my paintings and serigraphs are a re- sponse to that. It's very personal, as one of a kind as we all are. I just try to act on that. If I try to fit another mold, or if my motives become misdirected then the work suffers. My work is a visual manifestation of my life experience. I am unique in that experience and I think my work reflects this. you Say you "PrEfEr" to work In a "SErIES." why IS that aSPECt of your artIStIC aPProaCh IMPortant? I feel that my paintings are often part of a story. A story about a favorite place, a story about clouds, even a story about a feeling. Every once in awhile a painting will happen that has some new element that pops up, and then a new series begins there. It's a way to explore ideas more fully. It helps me look at the creative process from all directions and angles and it also pushes me, both conceptually and technically. your SErIgraPhS arE outStandIng. tEll uS how you CrEatE thESE PIECES? My serigraphs are done entirely by hand. I use a resist process to create a stencil. en I use that stencil to apply one color by hand onto individual sheets of paper. en I repeat the process for the next color and so on. Each color gets printed (screened) on 50 sheets of paper separately which creates a small edition of 50 pieces. e number of colors vary with each image but gener- ally there are between 15-35 layers of hand-applied paint that complete the finished serigraph. It's a nice mix to be both a painter and a printmaker. Printmaking is very physical, and paint- ing has a tendency to be sedentary, so it holds my interest to work intensively in both mediums. Kathy Bonnema Leslie, a Colorado na- tive, has maintained a studio in Montana since 1994. Her work has been exhibited in numerous one woman and group shows across the country. Selected juried exhibits include: The San Diego Watercolor Society international exhibition, The Taos National exhibit of American Watercolor, The Midwest Watercolor Society National exhi- bition, and Watercolor West National exhibition. in Montana, you can find kathy's work at both Altitude Gallery in Bozeman and her own gallery, ArTfusion, in Bigfork. For a complete list of her representing galleries check the Web site, www.kbonnemaleslie.com. Fresh Cut SeriGrApH Beautiful Day WATerCOLOr CONTiNUeD

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