{"id":4669,"date":"2013-11-08T12:41:52","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T20:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/?p=4669"},"modified":"2013-11-08T12:41:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T20:41:52","slug":"espress-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/08\/espress-yourself-4669\/","title":{"rendered":"Espress Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared on November 8, 2013 in The Alamedan<\/a>. Michele Ellson, editor.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Photo:

Photo: Michael Singman-Aste<\/p><\/div>\n

Dawn Leigh was flipping channels and came across a documentary about wine making, which included a snippet on an artist painting\u00a0with wine. \u201cI never seem to have enough red wine left over,\u201d Leigh said, so she went with \u201cher next favorite elixir,\u201d coffee. She brought some brushes and card stock to Spritzers Cafe, ordered a cup, and got to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe owner got very interested,\u201d Leigh said of the proprietor and curator Wubet Woldemichael. \u201cAnd as I started doing more she said, \u2018Let\u2019s do a show!\u2019\u201d An opening reception for her \u201cEspressions and More\u201d will be held at Spritzers from noon to 5 p.m. this Saturday, November 9.<\/p>\n

Leigh recently exhibited a landscape painting at Studio 23 Gallery as part of the \u201cShow Me the City\u201d group show, but this is her first solo exhibit in Alameda. She moved to Alameda from Southern California about a year and a half ago.<\/p>\n

It took a bit of experimentation\u2014and patience\u2014to master her new medium.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coffee pieces take a lot more time because they have to dry between each layer,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not always predictable as to what it\u2019s going to do when it dries. If you\u2019ve ever gotten a coffee stain on a piece of paper, it bleeds differently. Working with that to get it to do what you want it to do is kind of like herding cats.\u201d<\/p>\n

She found that she gets the best results using cool, day-old coffee. Hot coffee \u201cripples the paper much more,\u201d she said, and yesterday\u2019s brew has \u201ca little bit deeper tones.\u201d She also uses watercolor pencils, sparingly, to enhance the pigment. Leigh plans to lead a workshop on painting with coffee, open to the public, at Studio 23 Gallery next month.<\/p>\n

\"Dawn

Dawn Leigh, “What’s He”<\/p><\/div>\n

Many images in her coffee-based \u201cEspressions\u201d picture turn-of-the-century bathing beauties, inspired by 1920s photographs. \u201cThe natural sepia tones in the coffee led to that era painting,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen people go in and colorize (photographs), and that wasn\u2019t appealing to me. Keeping things in the grayscales, and keeping the tonality but still getting something to pop is what I like to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her \u201cSix Inches\u201d a man is measuring a woman\u2019s thigh to make sure she wasn\u2019t showing too much skin. \u201cA woman couldn\u2019t show six inches above her knee. She\u2019d be arrested,\u201d Leigh said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love that whole era, especially the rebellious ones,\u201d she added. She is considering a series based on Alameda\u2019s Neptune Beach, which was once located a stone\u2019s throw from Spritzers.<\/p>\n

\"Dawn

Dawn Leigh, “Lost Again”<\/p><\/div>\n

The exhibit also features three of her other series, \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles,\u201d \u201cAt the Bar,\u201d and \u201cKisses.\u201d Nearly every piece was created this year in a flurry of productivity.<\/p>\n

Work in \u201cPlanes, Trains, and Automobiles\u201d range from a realistic, detailed rendering of a propeller, to an almost film noir-like painting of a train speeding past a car. Of \u201cSpeeding\u201d Leigh said, \u201cI purposely tried to make it a little more impressionistic. I\u2019ve been trying to pull away from the more photorealistic stuff that I did to the more impressionistic side without losing my style.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leigh described herself as \u201ca frustrated ballerina or diva in my heart.\u201d She got a good foundation in ballet from a strict old nun, she said, but \u201clong ago I realized that I was not the ideal body type for that. Next to drawing it\u2019s one of my oldest memories.\u201d
\n <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Dawn

Dawn Leigh, “Sk8ter”<\/p><\/div>\n

She expresses her love for dance in the \u201cAt the Bar\u201d (sic<\/em>) series, which includes a ballerina, costumed for performance, leaning en pointe against a pub\u2019s bar, and a dancer astride a skateboard, one foot in toe shoes, the other in high tops. \u201cI was one of those girls that wore skirts and still was a tomboy and skateboarded and all that stuff in the ’70s,\u201d Leigh said.<\/p>\n

The images in \u201cKiss\u201d range from a couple butting gas masks in \u201cPowerful Kiss,\u201d inspired by the Syrian chemical weapons crisis in August of this year, to swimming lovers pausing to smooch in \u201cWet Kisses\u201d and a little boy\u2019s chaste peck in \u201cSurprise,\u201d inspired, like many of her pieces, by a found photo.<\/p>\n

Although inspired by coffee\u2019s color and aroma, Leigh usually drinks tea while painting. \u201cI was drinking the coffee and I couldn’t sleep,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I have accidentally almost drunk my paint cup!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEspressions and More\u201d will be on display through December 20. Art makes a great gift, and all these pieces are available for pick up before the holidays. Leigh is also available for commissions. More of her work can be seen at www.dawnleighcreations.com<\/a>. Spritzers Cafe is located at 734 Central Avenue, near Webster Street.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Singman-Aste
\nPostdiluvian Photo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared on November 8, 2013 in The Alamedan. Michele Ellson, editor. Dawn Leigh was flipping channels and came across a documentary about wine making, which included a snippet on an artist painting\u00a0with wine. \u201cI never seem to have enough red wine left over,\u201d Leigh said, so she went with \u201cher next favorite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[73,880,879,486],"class_list":["post-4669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artists","tag-alameda","tag-dawn-leigh","tag-spritzers-cafe","tag-the-alamedan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPxQO-1dj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4669"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4686,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4669\/revisions\/4686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}