Leader, Eve
Lives in Vancouver, BC
Artist Statement
Eve Leader’s paintings deal with the human condition and the mystery of life. About the tantalizing fact that we have only intimations, and will never know, the nature of reality. About the illusion that life is secure whereas in fact anything could happen at any time to totally change its course. About loss, fragility, old age, and mortality. And also about compassion and about love offering redemption from our plight.
Figures in Leader’s work are often androgynous and not of a particular person. Rather they are about what confronts us because we are human.
Leader tries to capture that moment of bewilderment when structure and order in our existence breaks down, everything looks unfamiliar, and we are sure of nothing.
She uses drafting film because she feels that it creates the ephemeral quality that she wants in her work. The figures are in abstract settings as she does not want to place them in any one human context. She uses oil paint for its materiality. In these works, she is not interested in painting the body in a realistic manner, but rather in finding a way to represent it so that it resonates more deeply with the viewer.