Reviews

Recently on display . . ., Joan Lesikin’s Bodyscape paintings catch the eye with their brilliant color, their stripes of yellow, pinks, orange and green . . . but these are no popsicles for immediate gratification. Once captured, the eye Lesikin paints for sees the landscape below the bright surface and questions arise. Because the artist is on a serious hunt for the ground we walk on. She drapes it in gorgeous colors, like the hills in fall . . . only in cloth not leaves.”
. . . \n “But Lesikin is after even bigger game because the landscape also stands in for human’s favorite subject [the human form].”
. . . “She is an artist, that is, who means to provoke as well as please.”

“Hinting At The Mysteries Beneath: Joan Lesikin of Cragsmoor Finds Her Oeuvre”
— by Chris Rowley

Joan Lesikin’s paintings . . . , Bodyscapes, seem solidly representational at first glance. They depict colorful swaths of cloth in mounded shapes fronting cloud-filled or subtly neutral backgrounds. They are reminiscent of the mountains we make of our legs under bedclothes, a mix of fantasy and real life beauties.
And yet the color spectrum she works with, as well as her methodology and breaking up of her images into diptychs and triptychs of oddly matches canvases reveals a deeper, conceptual underpinning to all Lesikin does. It raises the bar on her work and, in some newer pieces involving gold-paint backgrounds, seems headed towards a whole world of combined surface beauty and self-conscious commentary on Art with a capital A that is not only exciting, but also possibly profitable…given the nature of the contemporary art world.” \n\nDisrupting the commomplace”
by Paul Smart

. . . This exhibition of oil paintings and works on paper reflects the artist’s sensual, textured and beautifully considered subject matter. Influenced by the works of the artists Duchamp, Magritte and Man Ray, she combines figurative and landscape forms while focusing on color relationships. Lesikin has mastered many media, and has developed a visceral, tactile and emotional—yet intellectual—imagery.
Landscapes in oil at Douglas Gallery