September 22, 2008

By Darla Martin Tucker

David Leapman, acclaimed London-artist-turned-Riverside-resident will exhibit his abstract paintings in La Sierra University’s Brandstater Gallery Oct. 13 – Nov. 3. The gallery will present the artist and his show titled “Half Known Slow Burnt Layers” during a reception Oct. 13, 6 – 8 p.m. The exhibit is part of a joint effort between La Sierra University and the Riverside Art Museum to introduce Leapman and his art to Southern California connoisseurs.

Leapman is also exhibiting his paintings in the Riverside Art Museum’s DeVean Gallery through Nov. 15. The show commenced Sept. 9 and is titled “Compliant Keepers.” It is in partnership with La Sierra and features a public reception on Oct. 4 from 6 – 9 p.m.

Partnered exhibits between the Riverside museum and Brandstater Gallery are annual events, usually taking place at the beginning of each school year, said La Sierra art department Chair Beatriz Mejia-Krumbein.

“It is great to be able to exhibit artists of such high international caliber as David Leapman at Brandstater,” Mejia-Krumbein said. “Very often students read and study about renowned artists in text books or art magazines, but with this show they will have the opportunity to learn directly from [such an artist]. The students will have the opportunity to see his work and to talk to him during the reception.”

Leapman’s accomplishments include a 1990 exhibit at the Venice Biennale, in Venice, Italy, the world’s largest contemporary art show featuring high-profile artists from around the globe. During the summer of 2007, Mejia-Krumbein and La Sierra art students attended the Biennale, a thrill for all. It is thus particularly exciting to have a former Biennale participant in Riverside and exhibiting in Brandstater Gallery, she said.

Leapman, his wife and Riverside native, Christine Geerlings Leapman, and their teenage children, Sam and Jessica, officially moved to Riverside in July 2007. Christine works at the University of California, Riverside.

David and Christine met in 1989 through an English teacher who was involved in an exchange program between London and Riverside Community College.  The pair married in 1992 in the University of California, Riverside’s Botanical Gardens. In London, Christine ran an arts charity, taught yoga and parenting education classes while David’s work rapidly gained popularity.

For nearly 20 years, the couple, and later with their children, visited Christine’s parents, long-time Riversiders Gerald and Pauline Geerlings, once or twice a year before making the final move across the Atlantic.

“It’s a big part of my life,” Leapman said of his new hometown and sunny, sandy Southern California. “I just adore it. It’s a kind of slower pace of life. People are much more friendly here.” While London is a “fantastic” place to visit, long-term residency has its difficulties, the artist said. Furthermore, “being an artist is about exploration and I knew too much about London.”

In Leapman’s scant spare time he loves playing soccer, enjoys mountain biking and marshal arts. He also likes the region’s surrounding deserts. He developed an appreciation for dramatic landscapes during his travels to North Africa and the Middle East. “I’ve always had this attraction to the unusual,” he said.

A brush with the extraordinary
Leapman’s bold, abstract, atypical art employs Day-Glo paint, luster pigments, glimmers, diamond dust and mica-coated particles. He purchases art materials online.

Unlike some artists who depict elements of their personal lives or of society’s issues, Leapman’s bright paintings are more obscure and detached. Titles of works and exhibits are more “like a flavor rather than a scientific explanation,” he said.  “I really ask a lot of my viewer. They really have to work hard.”

His work hasn’t always been so bright and colorful. In 1992 Leapman rather dramatically shifted artistic gears and changed his painting style. Until then, Leapman’s large paintings consisted mostly of unprimed canvas with very small amounts of paint in extremely linear form, like drawings, he said.  “After 10 years of that the only thing to do was to go to the other end of the spectrum and blast people with color.”

Around 1992 Leapman’s work had hit the high-profile circuit in the United Kingdom through participation in the Young British Artists. The group captured the attention of renowned art collector Charles Saatchi whose vast collections included works by famed pop artists Andy Warhol and Alex Katz.

Saatchi, co-founder of London-based advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi, purchased most of Leapman’s first show depicting his new artistic direction, canvasses lathered in bright color and overlain with linear abstracted marks in interference paint, creating “…an extreme contrast between the quiet of the interference line and the power of the Day-Glo bands,” Leapman explained.  Saatchi included Leapman in his book titled "Shark Infested Waters," a publication featuring 20 Young British Artists whose works Saatchi had purchased.

In addition to participation in the famed Young British Artists group and his exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1990, Leapman in 1994 represented Great Britain in the International Festival of Painting. In 1995 he won the coveted $50,000 John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize, Britain’s oldest and most prestigious painting award.

“As soon as I left university I did get some very big breaks,” Leapman said.

Leapman earned successive art degrees at the St. Martin’s School of Art, Goldsmiths College at the University of London and at the Chelsea School of Art. His work has appeared in the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, the Ikon Gallery Burningham, Beaux Arts, London, and other prestigious enclaves.

Leapman is represented by The Drawing Gallery in Wales, Two Rooms in Auckland, New Zealand and by Beaux Arts. He will exhibit his work at a Drawing Gallery show in February. That event will coincide with a show at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in London where Leapman will exhibit as part of the 40 Artists-40 Drawings collection. He is currently seeking gallery representation in the United States.

PR Contact: Larry Becker
Executive Director of University Relations
La Sierra University
Riverside, California
951.785.2460 (voice)