Image courtesy of the artist and The Alice Wilds
Leslie Vansen, Clathrate, 2016 (detail).
Leslie Vansen, Clathrate, 2016 (detail).
No matter what color you use or how long you draw it—whether six inches or 60 feet—line is a simple one-dimensional expression. No more, no less, no matter how much it may squiggle or swirl. Whether in physics or geometry, a line is a simple measure of length, and that’s all.
In art, the simple line comprises the basis of most works, but it’s also subject to the artist’s whims and imagination. A line can be used as a building block supporting an artwork’s structure or as visual connective tissue tying together its various elements. It can even act as metaphor for the ideas and emotions expressed in the work.
Then there is the work of Leslie Vansen, a former art professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts, for whom the line has a life of its own. In Vansen’s work, the simple line has definition, depth, weight, and history. It represents life’s natural order, while at the same time disrupting the way we see and understand life. The line defines the nature of Vansen’s paintings and drawings, while struggling against the restrictions the artist has placed on its own stubborn expressiveness.
Lines Come to Life
To understand this approach, one need look no further than “The Topography of Line,” the new exhibit of Vansen’s art mounted by the Museum of Wisconsin Art. The exhibit, now open, runs through April 2 at MOWA I DTN, located in Saint Kate–The Arts Hotel in downtown Milwaukee. Comprised of nine paintings and nine drawings, some of which served as foundations for the paintings’ content, Vansen’s lines come to life as you stare into the myriad dimensions of her imagery.
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The viewer’s first impression of Vansen’s art is that the images are not flat, but rather built from layers of paint applied over time which, when turned sideways, make them resemble a topographical map measuring the heights of the different layers. The layers chronicle different periods of work on the paintings, as well as different source material and attendant emotions that come with their application. For Vansen, an Iowa native who taught art at UWM for 42 years, that translates into the “musculature of the line.”
“The images in my paintings are literally, concretely constructed from obvious abstract components of visual forms—surface, lines, color, space,” Vansen writes in her official Artist’s Statement. “These embody a repetitive continuum of memory and association with nature and architecture as experienced daily in an urban context.”
Cumulative Impressions
The paintings, 60” x 60” in size, often represent both cyclical and cumulative impressions that artist has had, either from her student days at the University of Colorado-Boulder when she hiked the Rocky Mountains with the help of topographical maps, to more recent time spent walking or cycling around Milwaukee’s East Side. Her paintings often take between 12 and 18 months to complete, Vansen says, and she usually works on more than one painting at a time. A background of classical music or, more recently, audio books accompany her creative process.
“I try to use lines from the story to keep my mind on the painting,” she says. “Since it’s acrylic paint that dries quickly, it takes sustained effort over time to create the right feeling in the viewers’ minds. Frankly, I like the combination of intention and failure.”
The paintings on display at Saint Kate all come from a period in 2008 when Vansen worked with artists from the Peck School’s music and dance departments to find ways to extend both her content and imagery in their respective musical and movement mediums.
“It’s the musculature of the line,” Vansen says. “They start as colors and become a concentration of lines that builds the surface of the image. I paint over drawings and sometimes over other paintings, with elements of each showing through. Even though I don’t control the outcome when I start, I still begin with a plan, and I want every decision I made showing on the canvas when I am done.”
Few artists operate with such decisiveness, and the complexity of her resulting works the emotions they raise show it
Leslie Vansen’s “The Topography of Line,”her first major solo exhibit in a decade, is on display through April 2 at Saint Kate–The Arts Hotel, 139 E. Kilbourn Ave., Milwaukee. For more information on the artist and exhibit, visit wisconsinart.org.
