On The Dubious Merit Of Ignoring The Visible

"Those people are always more pleasing to God who have sought what is essential in the invisible and ignored the visible as non-essential." Robertson Davies

Of course the invisible is less messy
and far less embarrassing.
It need not be cleaned up
or covered up,
and one can always imagine it
as better than it in fact may be.

The visible, on the other hand,
say a flower, or a landscape,
does draw the senses.
A face may, at times,
make one forget the supremacy
of the invisible altogether.

When that occurs
it must be dealt with:
Religion, or hard work, may suffice.
Consider running for public office.
Get on a board of directors
and work for someone else's good cause.

If the visible persists
in penetrating,
avoid poetry, dance concerts,
art galleries and arboretums.
Never, never!
plant a garden.

Poem by Karen Updike. Printed with pewrmission of the artist.

Artist Statement - Leslie DeMuth

As a landscape painter living at the turn of the millennium, I am a preservationist of a threatened world. I paint in the dawn and through the changing light of the day the endangered natural and agricultural vistas. As people speed ever faster through their lives, spend their days and nights in human-made environments, I capture in oil paint the bend of prairie grass heavy with seeds, the color of the sumac flaming in an autumn dusk, the light on the snow of a wintry woods.

I have been a landscape painter for almost 30 years. I began my work in the Flint Hills of Kansas, painted coastal New England for many years, and now make my home outside of Lake Mills, Wisconsin, with my husband, Steve Bower.

As a painter of the natural world, old architecture, and gardens, I've found our new home to be perfect. We built it on an old farm site that overlooks an Audubon Sanctuary prairie and the Crawfish River. We moved a nearly century-old town hall to our property in 2003 and turned it into a studio/gallery/woodworking shop. Our house is solar and we are in the process of surrounding it with flower and vegetable gardens. Maybe someday we will have the time to resurrect the old orchard!

Living here I do not have far to look for inspiration. Every morning the sun rises over the prairie with the river beyond reflecting back the color of the sky. Every sunrise is a new painting. The natural world has always been a source of wonder and delight for me. After these many years of painting I still seek to capture the beauty that I see every day. Each painting is a poem of gratitude.

I love old architecture and the sense of history and life stories that it represents. I find more grace in the simple lines of an old barn than I do in most recent structures. I appreciate the jumble of shapes and colors of a flower garden and the orderly rows of a vegetable plot. The light on an old building changing as the day passes,
the garden coming to fruition and fading with the season ─ these are the transitory moments that you will find in my work.

I pay attention. I paint the wonder of the world.

Leslie DeMuth

EDUCATION
Master of Fine Arts, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1981
Bachelor of Arts, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 1977

EXHIBITIONS
2006 Summer Blossoms, Group Show, Grace Chosy Gallery, Madison, WI
2006 Wisconsin Seasons, Appleton Art Center, Appleton, WI
2006 The Art of Nature, Franklin Public Library, Franklin, WI
2003 One Person Show, Green Lantern Studio, Mineral Point, WI
2003 Wisconsinscapes, Seippel Art Center Beaver Dam, WI
2003 Midwest Winter, Center for the Visual Arts, Wausau, WI
2002 Rustic Wisconsin, One Person Show, Lands End Gallery, Dodgeville, WI
2002 Solstice, Group Show, Green Lantern Studios, Mineral Point, WI
2002 Restoration: A Vision For The Land, One Person Show,
2002 UW Arboretum, Madison, WI
2002 Culture and Agriculture 2002, New Visions Gallery, Marshfeld, WI
2001 Living on the Prairie, Living on the Plains, Coutts Museum, El Dorado, KS
2001 Art Garden Too, Paine Art Center and Gardens, Oshkosh, WI
2001 Midwest Winter, Center for the Visual Arts, Wausau, WI
2000 Culture and Agriculture 2000, New Visions Gallery, Marshfield, WI
1998 Featured Artist, Edgewood Orchard Galleries, Fish Creek, WI
1995 Two Person Show, Grace Chosy Gallery, Madison, WI
1992 One Person Show, Grace Chosy Gallery, Madison WI
1989 One Person Show, Union Gallery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
1989 One Person Show, Goldsmith-Cardel Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
1989 One Person Show, Old Town Hall, Salem, MA
1988 One Person Show, Old Town Hall, Salem, MA
1987 Essex Institute Harvest Festival
1986 One Person Show, Arnould Gallery, Marblehead, MA
1984 One Person Show, East India Mall, Salem, MA
1983 Three Person show, Bradley Gallery, Milwaukee, WI
1982 National Juries Landscape Show, Terrance Galley, Palenville, NY
1982 58th Annual Rockford and Vicinity Juries Exhibition,
1982 Burpee Art Museum, Rockford, IL
1981 American Art: The Challenge of the Land,
1981 Pillsbury Center, Minneapolis, MN
1981 National Landscape Competition,
1981 William E. Tolley Gallery, Washington DC

GALLERY REPRESENTATION
Grace Chosy Gallery, Madison, WI
Spotted Dog, Mineral Point, WI
Art Search, Ann Arbor, MI

COLLECTIONS
Bank of Boston
Pillsbury Company, Minneapolis, MN
Salem State College
Hamilton Hall, Salem, MA
Boston Center for Adult Education, Boston, MA
University Hospital, Madison, WI