Leslie Vansen, Beginning and Continuing

Beginning and Continuing, Leslie Vansen
September 18 – October 31, 2020

The Alice Wilds is honored to present Leslie Vansen: Beginning and Continuing, Selected Works 2000-2020 opening Friday, September 18 through Saturday, October 31, 2020.

Beginning and Continuing presents the first comprehensive overview of Vansen’s work of the last two decades and her first one person show since 2008.

Having devoted her practice to the exploration of abstraction Vansen’s paintings result from a long and cumulative process of layered visual forms. Derived from observations of visual events encountered in daily experience Vansen’s accumulations of linear color meander, coalesce and dissolve into and out of both lyrical movements and inherent contradictions. For Vansen the visual vacillations between order, chaos and inexorable outcome supply her works with innumerable associations with nature and the familiarity of social interactions.

Vansen arrived in Milwaukee upon accepting a teaching position in the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 1978. Since that time, in addition to teaching, she has held numerous administrative positions within that institution and has been a notable influence on generations of students. She announced her retirement at the of the 2020 term.

Vansen has exhibited widely over the course of her career. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections both regionally and nationally.