Fundamental Needs

Ash Leslie

7 – 18 June 2023

Saint Cloche is delighted to reveal Ash Leslie, an artist based in Sydney’s South Coast, who uses painting to wrestle with her own feelings about the world to achieve a sense of certainty and lucidity.

Fundamental Needs – Embracing the Duality of Work and Play, is ultimately a celebration of the mind at peace and reaching a state of equilibrium after plunging deep into contrasting ways of operating in one’s own life.

The works are varied in planes of abstraction using a colour palette that is earthy and vivid, layered somehow with the veil of an impression of dormancy or invisible potential.

Fundamental Needs

"Growing up I often grappled with conflicting feelings around the validity of pursuing my passion for a career in the arts, and whether it could ever be considered purposeful work within today’s societal standards.

Delving into these feelings, I threw myself into working with a joyous and expressive approach, considering how this self-actualisation through creativity may facilitate a clarity of understanding of myself, others, and our environment.

Creating this collection of works has facilitated a resolution that work and play are not mutually exclusive but are in fact, fundamental to achieving a balanced existence."

Ash Leslie is an abstract artist based on Sydney’s South Coast. An intuitive self-taught painter, Ash trained as a graphic designer but transitioned to focus on her childhood passion for Visual Arts several years ago. Characterised by a multi- layered painting style, Ash’s works explore spontaneity and balance within each composition. The result she hopes for, is to grant the viewer a sense of interest and intrigue through the portal of each painting.

Ash’s work is driven by a deep, fundamental need to create art as a way of honouring her creative spirit and her greatest inspiration is the natural world around her and heartfelt moments within the journey of her own life.

Most recently Ash Leslie was awarded the Paddington Art Prize Gallery award and completed an artist residency with the Nock Foundation in New Zealand.