First Thursday artist reception at Garden Essentia: Leslie M. Riches

Meet September Featured Artist: Meet and Greet

Leslie M. Riches (Painting)

Thursday Sept 7 5:00 - 8:00 (open house)

"Garden Illustrations with Notes"

Garden Essentia

20152 Ballinger Way NE, Shoreline 98155

We would like to welcome artist Leslie Riches back for another Featured Artist Event with her new collection of paintings. Her beautiful art will be on display and available throughout the month of September. 

"Garden Illustrations with Notes"
Painting by Leslie M. Riches

Artist Statement: 

Sun, sky and dry dusty dirt punctuated with groups of vegetation. Strong light, pale blues, soft browns and greens illustrate what gardening looks like in an arid environment. These illustrations are accompanied by notes a gardener might keep on the process of trying to grow things in a place with little rain.

Inspired by old family photos of my Grandmother's place in Eastern Washington, this series explores a unique ecosystem that was part dryland gardening and part water conservation, using furrows to bring water directly to the roots. There is an art to watering evenly with this system, as well as in choosing the right plant for the right location so that, sometimes, no irrigation is necessary at all.

It is a system that depends on experience, intuition, science, and constant attention to small details that can affect the garden as a whole. It is a system in motion, continuously changing as the environment changes; of taking every possible advantage of the sun, while using water sparingly; of finding what works and letting go what doesn't.

The Garden depicted in this series is part history, part collective memory, and part imagination.

BIO:

Leslie M Riches is a local artist living in Shoreline.

Her background and training are in metals and jewelry arts. She has exhibited at the TAM Biennial, Tacoma Arts Commission Metal-Urge, and throughout the region; curated at Kirkland Arts Center (reviewed in the art journals Metalsmith and FiberARTS) and collaborated with artists in other media-including a Pike Place Pig, and a ceramic/silver dispenser and cups for "CoOperation Tableware".

Currently working in acrylics on canvas, she shows at Garden Essentia in Shoreline.