Gwyneth Leech

Biography

Gwyneth Leech has exhibited her drawings, paintings, and installations across the United States and the United Kingdom in a wide variety of museums, commercial galleries, public art, and alternative spaces. Since the middle of 2015, she has been focused on documenting in oil paintings and ink drawings the progress at numerous interior and exterior construction sites in Midtown Manhattan as the area undergoes major physical and demographic changes.

"Construction Paintings", her first exhibition of this new artwork, was on view in Fall 2016 at the head office of Sciame LLC, a construction company in New York City. In February and March 2018 she exhibited "Construction Series" in the Kaufman Arcade, a public art space in the Garment District, NYC. Also in 2018, her paintings have also been included in group shows at the Pierro Gallery in South Orange, NJ and Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, MA. In 2019, "Constructions Sites" was shown at the Clinton / Hell's Kitchen Studios Gallery on 52nd Street in Manhattan. Sixteen of her paintings were included in "Picturing Space", a group shows in the Art and Design Gallery at FIT, November 2019-January 2020. In 2020 she exhibited in City Perspectives III, a group show at CRG Realty on 125th Street in Harlem, curated by Suzanne Randolph Fine Art, and in the UPS Art Project at the Pelham Art Center in Pelham NY and the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven CT. A solo exhibition of paintings depicting the rise of One Vanderbilt is now public in a Kunstmatrix virtual gallery at gwynethleech.com/one-vanderbilt-rising/exhibition

Gwyneth Leech's construction site artwork has been featured on NY1 television news, in The Village Voice, in international media and is the subject of an award-winning short documentary, The Monolith, by New York City director Angelo Guglielmo. Click here to view: https://vimeo.com/244555885

Gwyneth Leech holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. The recipient of numerous awards and grants, including a Hell's Kitchen Foundation Grant, several Scottish Arts Council awards, an Elizabeth Greenshields Memorial Award, and a Thouron Fellowship, Leech's artwork resides in private and public collections. Recent corporate acquisitions include Brookfield, Cimolai, Despé Italia, Metropolitan Walters, NYC Constructors/Banker Steel, Sciame LLC, SL Green Realty, and Stonebridge Inc.

View current solo exhibition at gwynethleech.com/one-vanderbilt-rising/exhibition

Artist statement

In 2015, building construction began in front of my studio window in Manhattan. Overcoming a sense of loss and the desire to flee, I made a decision to stay and record the process from the foundation up. I realized then how fast construction sites change, with new shapes, patterns, light effects, and human dramas daily. It set my work on a new path. Now I see a city everywhere in a state of dynamic physical transformation and a sense of urgency drives me to witness and paint as much of it as I can.

I move around Midtown Manhattan with a travel easel and paint repeatedly near different construction projects. The pleasure of this endeavor is in watching the light and weather change endlessly across this mountainous man-made landscape which itself is always changing as the buildings grow.

There is also fear in the unexpected nature of painting in public. Yet, inevitably I end a painting session in a euphoric mood, enriched by the immediacy of the painting experience and by the people I meet who are curious about what I am recording and why. Construction workers, crane operators, engineers and architects, site and project managers, security guards, taxi and limo drivers, realtors, students, local residents, and tourists are among the people with whom I converse while painting on the sidewalks. There is a thrill in mixing art-making with the opportunity to hear the human stories of this exciting and diverse metropolis.