Artist Statement
I paint to explore the depth of my connection to the world—to process and articulate my relationship with the aspects of nature that permeate my everyday experience.
My process is intuitive, based on direct response to the beauty in the natural world that surrounds me. I confront the persistence of inner turmoil: anxiety, fear, mortality. I look to the wider world as a calming force, for inspiration I can draw within, internalize and then express onto the canvas. In doing so, I convert uncertainty into order.
Painting centers me. The act of creating opens up renewed possibilities and infinities of feeling. It’s my way of tapping into something greater than myself and translating feeling into form.
My work interrogates the balance between representation and abstraction. I’m attracted to rhythms of nature, and inspired by simplicity of form. My paintings are primarily landscapes and, every so often, interpretations of the sea. Environments refracted, filtered through soft light and flattened color. Modern, yet grounded in observation and emotion, they encompass fields of grain and fields of vision; oceans of deep water and oceans of color.
I trace lineaments of trees and surf, horizons, interstices of space, liminal breaths between ground and sky. I explore the structure and order that resides in nature. In a sense, I tell stories with my brush. Not complex narrative tapestries, but elemental stories, manifestations of collective knowledge and a sense of deep, evolutionary time.
My process is an accumulation of moments, each with their attendant small excitements. I map out relationships and boundaries; I add layers; I subtract and simplify. Line and color, shape and form, texture and physicality: these qualities merge in the gestures of my brushwork. I observe the tactile surfaces of my paintings, play with rhythms, with harmony and space. As I work, the surface ebbs and evolves, then settles, like a sea after a storm.
Though my process is instinctual and embodied, it’s designed to engender shape and structure. I draw on movement and energy—making marks, moving paint—to create work that, with patience and a bit of luck, finally resonates.
As my paintings evolve, beauty emerges from the tensions inherent in this process.
Biography
Carol Lesher is an American landscape painter. Born in 1962 in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and currently residing in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Carol has exhibited widely in both Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Carol has always been drawn to the natural world, and her work continually explores the expansive landscape. She works on large canvases, balancing the tension between minimalist and maximalist expression.
Her paintings, always grounded in the representational, have evolved from vignettes framed within the landscape to the larger, more expressive and expansive landscape itself. Though grounded in the representational, her focus lies increasingly in the material qualities of the paints themselves, and the brushwork used to apply them, layer by layer building beautiful passages within the work into a greater whole.
Carol graduated from the University of Delaware in 1985 with a BFA in Painting. Her work experience since includes ten years managing the art collection of MBNA America. She began painting full time in 1999.
Her influences include Diebenkorn, Hopper, Katz and Fairfield Porter—each painters of great strength and commitment to their medium.
Carol’s work ethic is strong; when not painting, she is constantly thinking about the possibilities for her work, and how she can push her creative growth and exploration further. She’s focused on creating work with the idea that the delivery of paint on the canvas is an act that creates its own excitement and its own forms. She seeks the beauty inherent in this process.
Her work is marked by a consistent stylistic integrity. She employs brushes of all sizes, wields her palette knife to shift surfaces, and carefully considers when and where to use each tool.
Carol aims to continue creating paintings for people to enjoy, develop gallery relationships that will support the evolution of her work, and develop this work to its fullest potential. She has no end point in mind—the painting is its own goal, its own reward.
Resume
Education
BFA, 1985, Painting, University of Delaware
Selected Exhibitions
2021
Solo Show, Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
2019
Summer Show, Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Academy of Notre Dame de Namur, Villanova, Pennsylvania
Abstractions, Scarlett Thicket Farm, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
2018
Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Acadamy of Notre Dame de Namur, Villanova, Pennsylvania
Abstractions, Scarlett Thicket Farm, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
Evening of the Arts, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
2017
Unionville Art Gala, Unionville, Pennsylvania
Works, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
2016
Holiday Show, Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Land and Sea, Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
HKS Evening of the Arts, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
Chadds Ford Art Show, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
2015
Group Show, Oxford Arts Alliance, Oxford, Pennsylvania
Solo Show, Church Street Gallery, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Chadds Ford Art Show, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
2014
Holiday Show, Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
HKS Evening of the Arts, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
Beauty & the Brush, Hardcastle Gallery, Centreville, Delaware
Chadds Ford Art Show, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
Holiday Show, Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
2013
Miniature Show, Hardcastle Gallery, Centreville, Delaware
Holiday Show, Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Chadds Ford Art Show, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
2012
Miniature Show, Sunset Hill Fine Arts Gallery, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Holiday Show, Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Plein Air Brandywine Valley, Tatnall School, Wilmington, Delaware
Chadds Ford Art Show, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
2011
Group Show, Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Plein Air Brandywine Valley, Tatnall School, Wilmington, Delaware
2010
Group Show, Red Raven Art Company
2008
Spring Thaw, Station Gallery, Greenville, Delaware
Holiday Show, Longwood Art Gallery, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
2007
Land and Sea, Longwood Art Gallery, Kennett Square, PA
Juried Members Exhibition, Chester County Art Association, West Chester, PA
26th Annual Christmas in Miniature, Chadds Ford Art Gallery, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
2006
Still Life and Landscape, Barnstone Gallery, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania
Juried Show, 143 Annual Exhibition of Small Oil Paintings, Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
25th Annual Christmas in Miniature, Chadds Ford Art Gallery, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
2005
Juried, Members Exhibition, Chester County Art Association, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Summer Show, Sunset Hill Fine Arts Gallery, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Professional Experience
1989-1999 Curator of Collections, MBNA America
Galleries
Maureen’s Gallery, Exton, Pennsylvania
Red Raven Art Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Showrooms
Holly Peters Oriental Rugs & Home, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
Somethings Unique, Greenville, Delaware