In “This Land is Your Land,” contemporary artist Leslie Wayne invites you to see the beauty of the world from above.
You ’ve probably taken this photo before : a glimpse at an veneration - inspiring landscape painting through your aeroplane window . Perhaps you caught part of the wing , slicing through translucent clouds . Maybe you could just make out the puff of green and brown squares below . Or peradventure you pull in up the shade while fade a C - cap pile , framed softly within your oval window . Leslie Wayne , a contemporary artist based inNew York City , pull inhalation from this vulgar desire to capture the world as visualize from above inThis Land is Your Land .
The series is on purview as part of Wayne ’s solo show through August 2 atJack Shainman Galleryin New York . We spoke with the creative person to well understand her employment and how traveling can inspire art .
This interview has been edit out and condensed for clarity .
All photos by Leslie Wayne, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery
Thrillist : Can you talk about what the inspiration behind this series is?Wayne : In 2021 , on a flight of stairs from New York to Seattle , I just face out the window and I just saw this amazing geology . And as we restrain moving west , I could see how it was shifting to this wild and wild landscape painting ofthe Rockies , these heart and soul - pivot irrigation circles and the grid of the crops , and then it break down into desert . The whole west coast has always been a very solid part of my identicalness ; I just need to document the west side of the continent .
One of the things that really moved me to act on this project was that while I was attend these photo , the Woody Guthrie song “ This Land Is Your Land ” popped into my head . And those lyrics really rest with me for a very long clip . That relationship to a very troubled legacy of Manifest Destiny and all of these thoughts coalesced together to make me determine to pursue this in a very particular way .
Why are we attend through a Boeing 737 window specifically ? The window frames in the paintings are based on the classicBoeing 737window skeleton . We all think these windows are just a standard shape , but they ’re not ; they vary a lot from planing machine to plane , from manufacturing business to producer . So I just chose something that ’s a classic , very recognizable shape that I could simplify . I ’ve been painting windows in various form for about 10 years . The windowpane is a metaphor for a roadblock that you could also see through , and here the airplane window is a symbolization of mobility , travel , and sumptuosity . They were n’t just go to be painting of aery landscapes ; the view of this window would give another whole layer of thinking behind them .
How has travel informed the work that you do?It ’s informed it a lot over the years in unlike way . This body of work is quite different . I started out as a plein air landscape catamount , but I establish my calling in New York on abstraction . And the generalisation was always informed by my human relationship to geology , the forces of nature . I like to manipulate the rouge and allow it to follow its own laws of physics — just as any material would in nature — so the weight of the blusher will remind you mayhap of a slow lava flow or a rush of an avalanche . The material is going to require to do what it most naturally require to do .
My married man and I travel a circle , and we wish to travel to places that are wild in nature . We ’ve buy the farm toPatagonia , theAtacama Desert . We used to trip a flock to the southwest . The desert landscape , being able-bodied to see layers and layers of aqueous sway depression , the subduction of geology that you may see on the exposed cliff face — those epitome have always played a big part in my work .
And is there a property in the humanity or in the US that you would advocate to go for an up - and - coming artist as a place to inspire them?Well , if they were interested in landscape painting and geology , I would say to definitely go to a position likeJoshua Treeor any of the Southwest Four Corners area . Bryce CanyonandZion National Park . Other space I ’ve been inspired by and recommend traveling to would be ournationalandstate parks , which are inordinately beautiful and show you the incredible diverseness of our American landscape — in particular those place that are changing rapidly due to erosion and modify industry , likeArches National Park , where one of the bighearted arches has already collapsed;Goblin Valley State Park in Utah ; andRedwood National Forestin California .
