Stacy Leeman

Stacy Leeman’s practice is grounded in oil paint, collage, and pastel, with an emphasis on material experimentation and the translation of text into visual form. Working from questions raised by Jewish texts and other literature, she develops paintings that combine gestural abstraction with a carefully built symbolic vocabulary.

Leeman has wanted to be an artist since childhood. Drawing began with crayons and developed into a sustained engagement with paint, collage, and tactile materials. The studio remains central to her life, not only as a place of production but as a space for sustained inquiry.

Her formal education began at Oberlin College and culminated in an MFA from Rutgers University, with a formative semester at Parsons School of Design in Paris. These experiences introduced her to varied approaches to art-making, from more traditional forms of instruction to highly conceptual and abstract environments. Each setting, she notes, challenged her to examine painting both formally and conceptually while developing the ability to advocate for and critique her own work.

Graduate school was especially important because it gave Leeman two uninterrupted years of studio practice. The experience reinforced her commitment to process and established a network of peers and friends who continue to influence her professional life.

For the past two decades, Leeman has worked primarily with oil paints, collage, and pastels. Yet she remains committed to changing her methods when a new material or approach can extend the work. Her recent return to oil pastel, a medium she had not used since undergraduate school, is one example. Artist residencies and teaching have also encouraged this willingness to test unfamiliar processes.

Experimentation, in her view, is not simply a matter of stylistic variety. It requires the mind to adjust, combining past knowledge with present curiosity. That active exchange between established practice and new material possibilities is central to the work’s development.

Text is often the starting point. Leeman approaches written material not as a source for illustration, but as a catalyst for investigation. A painting may begin with a philosophical question, thematic problem, or unresolved issue encountered in a text. Her studio becomes what she calls a “laboratory” for testing visual responses.

The resulting work uses symbolic colors and recurring forms developed for particular series. These elements allow her to translate aspects of written language into paint, collage, and gesture without reducing a text to a literal image. The goal is to create a visual equivalent for inquiry rather than a direct representation of a narrative.

Abstract Expressionism is an important influence, especially its commitment to emotional intensity and the physical act of painting. Leeman describes herself as a “gestural symbolist,” a term that identifies the dual structure of her work: active, energetic movement across the canvas alongside a deliberate symbolic system.

Her paintings bring ancient narratives into contact with contemporary experience. They are shaped by the labor of their making, including layers of paint, collage, and repeated revisions. That tactile quality is not incidental. It records the time and attention she brings to the studio.

For Leeman, a work is not complete simply when its composition is resolved. It must also tell a story, ask a question, or offer a new way of seeing. Through that standard, she maintains a practice that treats abstraction as a means of thought: physically engaged, materially open, and attentive to the ongoing relationship between text and image.