"Memories do not have sharp lines. I am interested in this inherent ambiguity."
- Leigh Werrell
Still Awake (Detail), 30" x 40", Oil On Panel
Leigh Werrell approaches the communal through the personal; trusting that her private thoughts and observations will connect her to others rather than separate her from them. She shows what she notices and, along with her, we recognize the mysterious in the ordinary. As Werrell questions and documents the qualities and the consequences of living in a city, her paintings touch on the seemingly contradictory feelings of being lonely in a crowd or feeling a sense of community among individuals.
As both voyeur and visitor, the artist paints the strangeness that gets overlooked and forgotten in daily life. She is both participant and researcher; capturing the qualities of an experience through exaggerations in spatial relationships and color. Werrell picks and chooses her focus - sometimes zeroing in on the minutiae and sometimes encompassing the big picture. While recording the individuality of her vision, she captures the connection of her anxious, perplexed, and curiosity-filled experiences which are likely to be shared ones.
"I tell stories about my life. Painting gives me the means to convey my fascination with a transparent green bottle, tell a story about the joy of living alone, or express nostalgia with an old t-shirt.....laundromats, lo mein, childhoods, sitting in the sunshine, loneliness, electric bills.
Perhaps another person will walk by me on the sidewalk and ask themselves if my life is like theirs. Can a piece of art confirm this? Are you just like me? Come into my space, and we'll find out."
- Leigh Werrell
What's Happening, 24" x 24", Oil On Panel
Night has its colors in the slight reflection of a wooden doorway or the yellow light of a distant window. Day is enveloped in layers of air with a blue or pink tinge. Looking through a curtain or frosted glass changes my mood and creates a contrast to the clear light of the street where I was earlier in the day, and how I felt in that moment. I consider these changes to be important as I develop my paintings and objects.
On dark city streets neon lights come forward, seeking attention, fulfilling their purpose. Items in my house have the same objective. I paint and sculpt those objects and scenes that, through meaning or aesthetic, bring me closer to them, like a storefront with a neon sign making me stare longer - asking, “What goes on in here? Aren’t you curious?”
I tell stories about my life. Creating artwork gives me the means to convey my fascination with a transparent green bottle, tell a story about the joy of living alone, or express nostalgia with an old t-shirt. We relate to others through our shared spaces and experiences. Laundromats, lo mein, childhoods, sitting in the sunshine, loneliness, electric bills. Perhaps another person will walk by me on the sidewalk and ask themselves if my life is like theirs. Can a piece of art confirm this? Are you just like me? Come into my space, and we’ll find out.
Leigh Werrell is an artist living and working in Philadelphia. She paints and creates 3D objects that relate to her life experiences, with visual ideas pertaining to feelings of mental discord, the uneasiness that emerges from the unknown, and nostalgia. She uses color to express mood and to create narrative. Much of her recent work uses papier-mâché relief techniques to create objects that are pushed forward intensely, and she also builds small objects and structures that she finds interesting while walking around Philadelphia. Werrell attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and is represented by Gross McCleaf Gallery. She has also been included in exhibitions at PAFA, Woodmere Art Museum, Cerulean Arts Gallery, Automat, Bowery Gallery, and others.
Women have been the cornerstone of operations and exhibitions at Gross McCleaf since Estelle Shane Gross opened her gallery in 1970 on the second floor of 1713 Walnut Street. Over 50 years later, Gross McCleaf is commemorating its rich history during (re)Focus 2024, a citywide festival celebrating women-identified and BIPOC artists.
Fortitude at 50: A Resilient Five Decades at Gross McCleaf Gallery features Martha Armstrong, Jan Baltzell, Joan Becker, Elizabeth Geiger, Eileen Goodman, Penelope Harris, Heidi Leitzke, Bertha Leonard, Ying Li, Ann Lofquist, Chelsey Luster, Bethann Parker, Nicole Parker, Jane Piper, Kimi Pryor, Mary Putman, Celia Reisman, Val Rossman, Mickayel Thurin, Leigh Werrell, and Lauren Whearty with self-portraits, dreamy narratives and formally complex still-life and landscape paintings. The works suggest a deep reflection of the self and a strong point of view conveyed through their distinct subjects and styles. The exhibition represents women artists in all stages of their careers who have helped shape the Gross McCleaf legacy and brand focus toward what Sharon Ewing, former owner and director, refers to as “painterly realism” – representation in painted form.
PHILADELPHIA — I first learned of Leigh Werrell’s work from her 2018 solo show at Gross McCleaf Gallery. I was struck by her nighttime bodegas, lamp-lit row-homes, steamy saunas, and hypnagogic self-portraits, which felt like snapshots from a dream.
Werrell’s latest body of work, Between You and Me, also at Gross McCleaf, is both a continuation of the artist’s earlier themes and an exploration of more inward territory: the enthralling experience of solitude and estrangement in the city. Many of the show’s paintings and three-dimensional works (sculptures and reliefs) are indirect responses to the pandemic: meditations on social distancing, isolation, and the absence of touch in this antiseptic era...
Elizabeth Johnson: In the Gross McCleaf statement you mention "approaching the communal through the personal" and the "seemingly contradictory feelings of being lonely in a crowd and feeling a sense of community among individuals." Were the pandemic years especially meaningful for you since we were together in our loneliness? If so, how did the pandemic affect your work?
Leigh Werrell: The pandemic has really changed me as a person––as I believe it has many people––and I think it has certainly changed my work. Throughout the last few years, I have been grappling with personal ideas of how I want to live, what is important to me, and what my studio practice means to me. I have realized two things: without a community to show my work to, I find it very hard to create; and to feel fulfilled I need to be making art...
“Landscape is indeed an inspiring subject to someone who values surprise, change, nuance, and natural processes. Landscapes are intrinsically creative forces. First, they evolve as complex systems from the interactions of geologic, biotic, and climatic forces over time. Then, when experienced as subjective witnesses, landscapes offer a light unique to that moment. The observer sees not just with her eyes but with layers of knowledge, familiarity, emotions, and, most crucially, curiosity.”
-Thomas Paquette
On Nature features over thirty new landscape paintings from Gross McCleaf artist, environmentalist, and explorer, Thomas Paquette. Brilliant arrays of color depict lush terrain, hazy mountains, rushing rivers, and panoramic vistas, where subtle and sensitive details in light and atmosphere are perfectly captured.
“I have a longing for a certain beauty that’s hard to describe, but it’s usually associated with summer colors. My desire for this summertime feeling seems inexhaustible, and though I’ve been trying for many years, I don’t feel like I am ever really satisfied.”
- Kurt Moyer
For over a decade, Kurt Moyer’s work has combined his love of nature with his reverence for art history. Born in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Moyer spent much of his youth exploring the Barnes Collection in Merion, Pennsylvania. Moyer now resides in rural New York near Rochester where he spends his time plein air painting from the beginning of spring until late fall. These passions converge in Moyer’s new abstract paintings on view at Gross McCleaf...
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by gallery artist, Douglas Martenson and a group exhibition featuring the work of Brian Boutwell, Betsy Eby, Deirdre Murphy, Celia Reisman, Rebecca Segall, Sterling Shaw, Michayel Thurin, Alexandra Tyng, and Leigh Werrell, curated by Douglas Martenson.
Douglas Martenson paints observationally in various locations in Maine and Pennsylvania. He meticulously documents the light, atmosphere and environment of each view through a variety of painting techniques. While the painted objects appear with local color firmly established, a sensitive eye will begin to perceive deep reds, light purples, golds, chromatic grays and a spectrum of ever-present blues. Martenson’s careful handling of paint opens up worlds within each object, giving way to a conceptual interpretation over time.
