Spectral Evidence: Virginia Leonard

Virginia Leonard’s ceramic works are ornate wonders. Their appearance could resemble sea creatures, or tropical vegetation, or perhaps even alien life. Colourful, sharp, seemingly floral and often gilded, the works have a fantastical quality and an aesthetic sensibility that borders on the Baroque.

Leonard recalls a visit to New York, after presenting an exhibition in Miami. Walking through Central Park, she made a spontaneous decision to visit the Metropolitan Museum. “I went to the first floor, where there’s three Rococo rooms. I sat there for four hours; they were just gorgeous.” She also cites the lavish set and costume design of Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette as a key point of reference in her aesthetic,“I just love the indulgence in the ornate. More is more in my world,” she states.

Leonard’s works have a complex appearance, though this comes about from the post-firing addition of countless nodules. “They’re not that complex as primary forms. Usually, they are open vessels, and sometimes they have open crowns at the top. I will fire them at a very high temperature with one side propped. The propped side will stay up, but the other side will slump. It’s controlled to a point.”

Leonard initially trained as a painter and then morphed into working in ceramics in 2013. “I have a friend who is a potter in Matakana. I went up to his studio, and he said, ‘make an ashtray’. So I made an ashtray. He figured that I’d get bored and moved on. About five months later he turned around and said, ‘Oh my god, you’re still here, every day. Clearly you love this material. Go buy a kiln and set it up – and get out of my studio.’ I have never painted since.” 

Nevertheless, Leonard’s field of reference relates to painting rather than ceramics. She cites the blended colour of Gerhard Richter’s squeegee works, the complex materiality of Mark Bradford’s collaged paintings, and the surprising textural nature of Monet’s large scale late career works. “Mostly, I look at the work of dead painters, and especially at colour. I saw a Rothko once in a private collector’s apartment in New York. Seeing one in a domestic setting was extraordinary, and I got to really spend some time with it. Rothko’s understanding of colour was just insane.”

“I approach my work from a perspective of materiality. Figurative painting doesn’t do it for me,” says Leonard. That materiality has come to include epoxy resins. “Resin has similar properties to paint in some ways,” she says. Such material is high stakes, with a limited window to work with it between mixing and setting, and potentially dire consequences to working too slowly. “The risk with resin is overworking a piece. There’s no time to think, I’ve just got to go. If I sit there and ponder, it will always look laboured. I just have to work quickly and instinctively.” As well as its colour and high gloss finish, resin adds a degree of structural strength of Leonard’s artworks. “Sometimes, the work will come out of the kiln cracked. That’s part of the process. After firing I can use resin to build up a work.”

The cracked, slumped, and visually lavish nature of the artworks is part of their meaning to the artist. Leonard was in a serious car accident when aged 20, and she has had ongoing issues and chronic pain ever since. “Pain is in the work – on some level, it’s always about that. I have a relationship to pain, and it is part of my experience. My artmaking is about turning that into something beautiful. It has to be beautiful. The celebration of ornateness is essential for my survival,” she says.

Spectral Evidence is Virginia Leonard’s third exhibition with Gow Langsford Gallery.