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I'm a seeker at my core, who's been in love with gluing things together since childhood. What started with beads, feathers, and sparkles has evolved into large-scale pieces made from materials I create myself: paintings, monotypes, drawings, photographs, and sewn paper. My practice transformed from photography to mixed media after earning my MFA in San Francisco and settling in Los Angeles, but that photographic sensibility remains—what's left out is as vital as what's included, felt rather than seen.
I take disparate papers and intentions, putting them together to see if something bigger can emerge. I'm obsessed with in-between spaces, the charged places where two things meet. I love the overlap, pieces peeking out. I am seeking what feels like stacked time and layered histories—not linear, but like Russian dolls, seeking both disruption and reconciliation through the meditative process of gluing and tearing away. I usually start a body of work inspired by a poem or life event, creating studies, drawing to capture line quality and movement, making monotypes and paintings. Then I tear them up, working my fragments into the drawings or drawings into the fragments, searching for color, tension, spaces that can be both/and. The process is intuitive—building up, tearing away, reconfiguring until something clicks. When I'm working, I'm searching for surprise, that darkroom feeling of watching an image slowly reveal itself. Nothing is wasted in my practice. Bins of "failed" experiments become material for future work—what didn't work five years ago might save a current piece. The process itself embraces uncertainty and envisions possibility, and always trying to understand what it means to be alive. |
BIO
Jackie Leishman grew up in Georgia, moving to the Los Angeles area after completing her MFA from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Originally trained as a photographer, she now works as a mixed media painter. Using both traditional and non-traditional materials, including fragments of old projects, Leishman explores the dichotomies she witnesses. Select solo and group presentations include Ahmad Shariff Gallery, Claremont, Meyer Gallery, Park City, Claremont Museum of Art, Susan Elay Fine Art, New York, Granary Art Center, UT among others.
Leishman’s work has been featured in Feel Free magazine, Penumbra, Flyway, Whitefish Review, VoyageLA, Artemis Journal, and others. She has been awarded grants and residencies including the Anderson Center, and Prairieside Outpost. Her work is beloved by collectors, art advisors, and designers. She recently completed a large commission for Stream Realty for their Regions Plaza commercial building in Atlanta, GA, designed by Gensler. She collaborates with evolutionary biologist Steven Peck on bodies of work investigating the loss we will continue to experience with climate change. Their work has been featured in multiple publications and their entire first body of work was bought by a major University library for their permanent collection.
Leishman’s work has been featured in Feel Free magazine, Penumbra, Flyway, Whitefish Review, VoyageLA, Artemis Journal, and others. She has been awarded grants and residencies including the Anderson Center, and Prairieside Outpost. Her work is beloved by collectors, art advisors, and designers. She recently completed a large commission for Stream Realty for their Regions Plaza commercial building in Atlanta, GA, designed by Gensler. She collaborates with evolutionary biologist Steven Peck on bodies of work investigating the loss we will continue to experience with climate change. Their work has been featured in multiple publications and their entire first body of work was bought by a major University library for their permanent collection.