My name is Leopi Lein Nicola Sanderson-Edmunds. 

 

 

I am a self taught painter.

  

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The passage ways series

 I see my paintings, as a form of raw primitive surrealism straight from my viscera, and blood. I am working most often with the theme of  "archetypes". The paintings are playful, ancient, visceral, intense, sensual, pensive and often with some form of subtle humour. 

Each painting comes through me as if  I am the messenger. As if the roots of my ancient family roots requires me to call us home. I am compelled to remind me, who I am and who you are.

 The "beings" that come to me and through me, within each of the paintings, are story tellers themselves.  The presence and character of each individual within the painting is truly unique. I most often have no idea who they are, although they are very familiar. Each large painting can take up to three months to paint.

The beings that I present, are always in some form of movement, action, or a movement into a pause of movement, a moment of dance, perhaps a meditation or prayer.

I see and paint them engaging with US as we engage with them.

My work needs to be presented as one large installation piece within a large sacred space. A contemporary place of prayer.

 

The paintings belong to one another, representing a journey through a life time of our human experience,   in the form of Body with Spirit within it. It is our exhalted body.  Our sentient Body. Each painting is representing an Archetype of Life's transitions.  This is a body of work about our one human community and our human connections. I hope by being with them we can have more compassion and understanding for others.

 

There is no identification or importance here of what race or skin tone or timeline or culture or religion we are in. There is no skin colour, or hair style or clothing to make you more comfortable. We are stripped and pure. Like a new born baby.

Here in my world, we all belong in each of these bodies and faces.  Our grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, sister, brother, etc.

What is important to me,  is the timelessness of our story as a human, that we all share together.

Our common story is ancient as it is also modern. Our story is a continuum of our resilience, but also of Love between us and in in us. We are also human and share sadness, violence, disappointment and fear.

 The paintings are holding our dark and bright secret spaces of being in this human experience.

This is a unlimited series of archetypes and infinite ideas of work which will continue to grow.

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It is my hope that we experience a moment of self reflection as we stand with them. Are they looking at us? while we are looking at them? what do they think of us? not just, what do we think of them?

It is also most important to me, that we release our shame of our human body, of ourselves naked and pure and also of his or her genitals.

We see here, the body as whole and beautiful and resilient, genitals and all. Our sexuality is sacred. Our body as our sacred temple, and, it is.

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The colours are very important to me, and began in my imagination as little girl, through my vivid childhood dream time, which was always a profound vivid color experience. My father would wait for me in the mornings, to ask about my dreams.

The ranges of blue were a spiritual passion, I struggle to capture still, and the blue and orange spectrum  inspires me in most of my paintings. It is like tasting the most delicious food when I work with Color. I simply cannot get enough.

 

My story:

Both my parents are artists and so, since the beginning of me landing on this earth, and all that I can remember, my art school began and continued at home. I give credit only to this really. My parents, their friends and community of artists and scientists and philosophers, surrounded my youth. I am grateful for this fortunate beginning.

​Drawing and painting was simply what I did all the time. Possibly because I had a very difficult time in public schools, switching languages from German and English and being from bohemian parents in the 1960s, we were always in trouble and misunderstood. We were bilingual but always out of place and foreign. I think painting was the only safe language I knew, where I could be myself.

 Interestingly, I always seemed to draw and paint the nude body which did not help me stay out of trouble in public schools at all. I did even as a very small child. The body always fascinated me and without clothes on made it  much easier to explore. I also often painted animals, especially cats being embodied. What really fascinated me all my life until now, and what I wanted to tune into since a child was what our "body~being" was capable of. 

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One of my favourite pastimes as a child would be to study the movement and energetic body of animals.

I liked to track wild animals and paw prints, and pets too and watch and explore every movement and action and then draw this.

As a child, I always wanted to understand the experience of being in an animal body too.  So I would also paint explore this in my paintings. 

Some people have asked me if my paintings are Shamanic. I think I am simply tuning in to some other energetic dimension of being in a body,  that is either human or animal, and that can become very tangible to me. I also see this more clearly with the work that I do as an ortho-bionimist. To feel the energetic and physical body on the material earth plane. Sadly, it is something we have all forgotten in our modern world. There is also exploration of the possibility of shapeshifting. 

 

I also see such power and truth in the body~being from the perspective of being a midwife  A woman in labor (who is feeling safe and connected to her process)  is one of the most, pure, honest, powerful, moments of our primal wisdom. This also inspires me to paint. To paint what others cannot see. A  secret, pure, and mysterious world that I am allowed into and, as a midwife and an artist. I am deeply touched and inspired by this path.

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My Story

 

Visual Arts was always present in my life, because my father was an experimental  film maker and photographer. Equally creative though, was my mother a modern ballet dancer, who deeply influenced me with movement, play, form and expression, and creativity. We played dance, movement and theater as a family.

Both my parents were very agile, so my twin sister and I are too. Joy of movement was a very natural way to be together and to play.

My father, did not believe in conventional Art schools for painting, although he was a professor of film at the Slade Film School, Harvard and then California Institute of the Arts?​  in fact, looking back, he discouraged me from going to painting school at all! although I would have a free pass. He feared they would change me and my style. He wanted me to practice and discover my own style and study and study but with myself.

I was always quite talented, drawing, painting and movement. My father was concerned art school, would ruin the imagination I had and my creative Spirit. So I did not go.

It certainly took a moment as I grew up into a woman,  to feel any confidence or any belonging to the art scene and even with other painters,  since I am self taught. So, then in my 30s I decided to go find out myself,  go to an art school and I hated the way I was taught. I was told not to paint the human figure at all and to become an abstract painter as that was the art scene. They shamed me for what I wanted to paint. My father was absolutely right. I pursued Art therapy and moved on.

No matter what, this creative connection and communication from my inner world to my outer world, simply needs to pour out of me in my own way. I am also extremely compelled to paint on a large scale. So,  I paint large canvases.

 

It is important to include,  I have  been a home-birth midwife since 1984. I am also a Ortho-Bionomy practitioner -  somatic body therapist/healing hands kind of person. My German grandmother was also a  healer and she influenced tremendously.  She was always cooking and creating healing remedies and taking care of us and people round her. She had magic around her.

The Holistic body-mind- Spirit- connection, is very much what is integrating and weaving in and out of my work as a painter.I believe we can heal through our eyes to our soul as well. 

What I see in my hands and in the primal moments of creating Life, I paint on a canvas. When I work with the body in therapy, I see dimension, depth, viscera and bone, energy and matter, light and dark channels and yes

I see color, all of that flows and opens, like springs of water, foam off a wave gently coming in and out,  and deep canyons with shadows of sunlight. I am a visual person. I see beyond what most see.

 When I paint, I see my dreamtime colours, light, depth, dimensions, space, structure, and I interplay with both being a body therapist and painter at all times. 

 

I might even like to imagine that the paintings are a form of healing within themselves, to share with the seer. Perhaps that is the purpose of my messengers. They are an offering, a reminder to self awareness and correction, self alignment, self Love and dignity to the seer. An offering of healing and transformation.

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Born:

Cambridge, England

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Living spaces:

London, Germany,

Cambridge, MA, Hollywood, CA, Big Sur, CA, Santa Fe, NM, New Orleans, LA, Northern California, Bay Area,

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Family:

European, Australian and American citizenship, Father Australian, filmmaker, painter, poet. Mother German, modern ballet dancer Fraternal twin, jeweler, artist.

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Education:

Self taught painter through the visionary guidance of art in my childhood, BA in studio painting and psychology, Art therapy concentration. Ortho-bionomy practitioner, homeopath, Licensed home birth midwife  since 1984,  New Mexico, Louisiana, Texas and California.

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 The Passage Way series paintings that represent the Sacred Feminine and the Sacred Masculine.

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Painters influences:

Painters: Odilon Redon, William Blake, Gustave Moreau, Giotto, Wassily Kandinsky, Leonor Fini, Igor Tarkovsky and Sergei Paradjanov, Russian icons and the Symbolist painters and now Hilma of Klint.

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The Passage Way Series
Description: 43 Large figurative paintings each exploring the contrast and vibrancy of the two opposing colors of blues and oranges to gold.
Life size and Larger than life, so that they may relate to us through their body directly to our body, as if we are only a thin membrane of separation apart. We are watching them as they are watching us.

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Colors and meaning of:

The Color in the paintings are to harmonize and calm the soul/Spirit. During a difficult time of racism, mysogyny, sexism, war, homelessness, earth and planetary dysfuntion, too much technology and materialism, we slowly forget our humanity and our connectedness to one another, to nature and the other Beings.

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Technique
the medium is Golden acrylic paint.
Copper leaf
Each painting has many layers of color beginning with one solid base of color. Most paintings take about one to three months to complete.

Blue Spectrum
Represents the masculine tone, grandfather, father, son. Humanity.
Water, the Moon and Mercury, the higher mind, the potential mind, philosophy, spirituality, The Hermit, Inner life, Alchemy, silver. fluidity, storms, peace and war. No death. Love and Mercy. Blue is science. honour, protection and integrity.

Orange Spectrum
Represents the feminine tone, Grandmother, mother, daughter.
the Sun, Fire, rich earth, transformation, creation, alchemy too, gold, courage, action, stillness and being, regeneration, energy, nurturing, destroying, birth and death. Love, Compassion, protection.

The orange and blue are the ting/ yang and is the dynamic force that makes everything turn, hum, purr and throb. Unseen but ever present, perfect balance, in each of us and in nature.
Together they grow green.
 

Hands and Feet are accentuated, representing the importance of them as tools for us to experience life, love and action upon earth.

Rose Spectrum:
Rose represents the embodiment of Spirit and Passion, such as ecstasy, tenderness, sensuality, sexuality, deep gratitude, Love, Mercy, desire, vulnerability, surrender and the experience of intimacy with self and others. Passion expands the realm of experience and the experience is always now. Rose comes as a quiet, intoxicating secret force from the warm breath of Life. Our Senses, respiration, heartbeat, heart, inner womb space. Rose is the sensation of touch through the senses of the body and the heart.
 

 

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