Portrait of a Painter: Leslie Watts
article and photos by Ann Baggley
Editor's note: Congratulations to Leslie Watts, whose painting entitled Pamela Newel Sellers (pictured left, 2nd from top) has been selected for inclusion in the BP Portrait Award 2013 exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery, London, UK. In celebration, we are sharing this article about Leslie, originally published in Start Stratford in 2010.
There are three paintings of pears in the window of Village Studios in Stratford and they are making me feel, dare I say, amorous. The 'pair' of pears are clearly in a relationship, and are practically blushing from the intensity of it. These are some of the recent works of artist Leslie Watts. In a relatively short time, Leslie has established herself as a profound contemporary realist. Landscapes, pathways, staircases, an empty hall with a lone suitcase (my favourite), illustrations for children's books and most recently, portraiture: all of this from an artist who is, remarkably, self taught.
“I've always been interested in realism,” Leslie explains at her home on a stormy November day. “I'll look at other people's work. I'm trying to see how (they) solve problems. On the other hand, not having gone through formal training has allowed me to develop my own style and not be bound to somebody else's idea of how I should be painting. I'm kind of pleased, in a way, that I didn't get too much input from other people.”
Hailing from an artistic family (her parents went to life drawing classes together) she always knew that she was artistic. “When I was really small I wanted to illustrate children's books,” she recalls. But a friend's older sister convinced her it was “a waste of time” to take art in high school, and Leslie headed off to Glendon College at York University to get her degree in psychology, taking an art course while there. Once she graduated, she took what she had in her portfolio to the Ontario College of Art, but she was not accepted and was unsure about her future as an artist. Things changed for Leslie after meeting her (now ex) husband, a full time painter. They travelled to Italy for a year and with his technical guidance, she wrote and illustrated her first children's book, The Troll of Sora. When they came back to Canada, she found a publisher and they moved to Harriston, Ontario (population 1900) where she stayed for the next 19 years.
In 2001 Leslie was brought to Stratford to sit on a children's book panel, and she found that there “were a lot of people (here) who kind of do what I do”. In 2004, with her marriage over and her children teenagers, Leslie and her partner Peter bought a house here and she began to establish her place in the artistic community. In the past few years Leslie has really been making a name for herself.
“I almost felt like I was starting a new life with my kids leaving home and being here on my own,” she recalls, glancing out the front window, hail now pelting the pavement outside. “Since my kids moved out I've discovered I am a bit of a night owl. I'll paint until 2 or 2:30am. I really like that feeling of being in my little box with the blinds closed.” It's an isolated, independent process for her, but by no means is it a quiet one. “I'll listen to BBC radio. I watch movies (but) I can't watch action films or anything where there is no talking. British mysteries are great because they are chatty, something very wordy that is taking me out of my own head. You don't need the verbal part of your brain to paint so I can talk on the phone when I am painting or Skype with my kids. (Which) is great because that means that I am not totally alone in my studio.”
There's a magnetic allure to Leslie's paintings. “I like to play with light,” she says, referring to the interiors she paints. “They seem to evoke a kind of mood that people like.” The essential mission for any artist is creating work that people will buy. Leslie will only bring works to Martha Courtney at Village Studios that “I think are beautiful. I want them to be beautiful. I want people to look at them as objects of beauty. And then they can add on whatever other feelings they may have!” She does find it curious, however, that “if I do a painting that has a lot of blue in it, it takes a long time to sell. I don't know what that is. Yellow paintings have sold very quickly, paintings that are warm,” she notes.
We take a trip to her studio, up a set of stairs that reveal countless illustrations of colourful faeries and woodland creatures, to a very small sun-room off the second floor. Leslie is in the process of working on a portrait of her niece. “I always ask my subjects to not smile because I think smiley portraits look really fake!” she laughs. Leslie works from a photograph of the person rather than having them sit for hours, but she is adamant that “I don't want my paintings to look like a photograph. I want it to look like a painting. I am using photographs as a tool to make sure that everything is in the right place. I do want to be able to exaggerate certain things; the light, the way an eyebrow is cocked”. Her medium for portraiture is egg tempera (mixing pigment with egg yolk and water) and she loves this because “you can put the veins and freckles and everything underneath, put some more light colour over top and it looks way more like real skin.”
Two or three paintings a week are finished for Village Studios, representing about 84 hours of work. Leslie has let go of writing for now, as “part of the discipline is giving up all the stuff that doesn't point toward painting.” Her ability to pare down and centralize is key to her success. Of late, Leslie has been reflecting on the nature of success and how reality TV shows affect our perception of it. “There's this idea now in our society that you work towards something and either you win or you lose. You've got this one shot at it and if you don't make it, well, then you're a loser. That's not really how life works, in anything. You have to keep working at it. (It's about) success that comes through being yourself and being an individual. The way to get direction is to just put in hundreds and hundreds of hours of figuring out what your hand is going to say with what your eyes are seeing. You can't do that if you're a hobbyist or if you've got a whole bunch of other things to do …” Sound advice from an artist who has found her true path.
