Biography
Leah Dockrill grew up in Halifax and has lived in Ottawa and Edmonton.
For many years now Toronto has been her home, where she lives with her
husband and two Maine Coon cats. She has been a highschool teacher, an
academic librarian, and a lawyer. Throughout her practice of those
professions, she was a painter, and long resolved to make art her
full-time occupation when and if circumstances made it possible. She
has been able to engage in painting full-time since 1995. She travels
frequently to the Atlantic coast, north and
south, relishing the wild elegance of nature, gathering artistic
inspiration, and breathing sea air.
Artist's Statement:
There I stand, at
land’s end, not so
sure-footed on slippery shale, surrounded by primordial boulders in
extraordinary colours. All my senses are engaged. The wind is up, the
waves are crashing, sea foam is flying. I can taste and smell the tang
of the ocean, and whichever way I turn, I am able to frame, in my lens
and in my mind, a breathtaking image.
Some time later I will stand in my studio, facing a big blank canvas,
with brush in hand. The process of liberating the stored mental images
of that singular, sensual experience, is as unique in painting as the
activity of standing on the shore, drinking in my surroundings. Unlike
still life, in which I must contrive a composition of objects, or
portraiture, in which it is crucial to adhere to the features of the
sitter, painting the natural world gives me limitless artistic license,
which is exhilarating. My objective is not to paint every rock with all
its scars and fissures, just so, but to reflect my impressions at the
time I stood ankle-deep in beach debris. If I can convey at least some
of that, I consider myself blessed.
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