Leslie Neumann - Critic's Quotes

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Critic's Quotes about Leslie Neumann
Lennie Bennett, St. Pete Times
	“Hard to say whether Leslie Neumann's subject matter serves her medium or the medium serves the subject. Which is to say they work very well in partnership. She is essentially a landscape artist,…but we see that "landscape" is a loosely applied word, really just a starting point for Neumann, who often ventures beyond the terrestrial into the heavens for inspiration. And in so doing, often distills images to the point of abstraction. Her gift for color is undeniable. You can get lost in her imagined lands.”
Susan King, St. Petersburg Times
	“Bay area artist Leslie Neumann's meditative landscapes invite the experience of being present. Forget about the "monkey mind" and those chores and holiday shopping lists. Melt into her encaustic paintings, made from a process in which hot wax meets oil paint. Like some of the sublime, edgier paintings by English landscape artist J. M. W. Turner, land and sea border on the abstract. Get lost in the texture, drips and colors of earth, fire, sky and sea.”
Lara Bradburn, Tampa Tribune
	“To the casual observer, the work of Leslie Neumann evokes a distinctive artistic paradox. It is both passionate and soothing, powerful and disarming, apocalyptic and transcendent, predictable with an element of surprise. It’s a dichotomy of sensations from an artist intent on peering into nature’s soul.”
Joan Altabe, Sarasota Herald Tribune
	“No one intrudes in Neumann’s pictures, making them like dreams coming out of the mist. The untrammeled air, the absence of visual noise, could be an illustration for that line in Jack London’s “White Fang”: “A vast silence reigned over the land.” Just because you don’t see anyone in her pictures doesn’t mean the human condition is not present. There’s no peace here, no safe hold. Neumann’s landscapes are about life. They celebrate unpredictability and mood. If you want to see the sublime, see these pictures by Neumann.”
Susanne Nielson, Creative Loafing
	“Their dreamy quality takes us to a subconscious part of ourselves.”
Mary Ann Marger, St. Petersburg Times
	“Leslie Neumann is a dark romantic whose mysterious landscapes seem independent of time – or weather. “Over the years, she has refined her unusual technique of layering oil paint and hot wax, to create settings that seethe with haunting luminosity, as if permeated by spirits.”