Lesley Anne Spowart "Canine Triptych Iii" Acrylic on Board, Small Dog Painting in Turquoise and Pink, Carmel California Art, Statement Artwork, 2024

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A pink dog with a long muzzle and a dark, watchful eye stands in profile on an olive-green block against … Read more A pink dog with a long muzzle and a dark, watchful eye stands in profile on an olive-green block against a turquoise sky, its back dusted with ochre flecks. Around it the board breaks into planes: a tall red column, a broad cream sweep, a striped patch of orange and white, and a navy corner. A smaller red animal peeks in at the right edge. Spowart paints on board for the resistance it gives back, and the surface shows it in dry, dragged brushwork and scraped passages where one color shows through another. The animal is plainly a dog, yet partly built from the shapes around it.

Square and compact, it sits happily over a console, a sideboard or a reading chair. The turquoise and pink lift warm neutrals such as oatmeal linen and cream, while the red and olive pair well with walnut and cognac leather. It works alone as a bright accent, or in a cluster of small pieces on a wall where you want some play and color without a large commitment of space.

Acrylic on board, 12 x 12 x 1 in (30.5 x 30.5 x 2.5 cm). Unframed.

Lesley Anne Spowart is a colorist who works mainly on paper or board, drawn to the resistance the support gives back. She builds layers of acrylic, then sands, scrapes and scratches through them so that one color surfaces from the one beneath. Her wider practice also draws on printmaking, photographic xerography, beeswax and tar, and she works in a studio set in a retired wine cellar in Monterey, California.

Lesley Anne Spowart grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and earned a B.A. in Art History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, before graduate study at UC Davis, UC Riverside and Cal State Fullerton, where she studied museum practice and exhibition design. As a student she helped install works by artists including Sol LeWitt, Beatrice Wood and Viola Frey. She lives in Monterey, California, where she and her husband raised three children.

A self-described colorist, she works in beeswax, tar, photographic xerography, acrylic and collage, painting abstractions, landscapes and animals in a studio set in a retired wine cellar. She has exhibited widely on the Monterey Peninsula and nationally, including at the Monterey Museum of Art, and her work is held in collections including Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula and Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital. She was voted Best Local Artist by the Monterey County Weekly in 2010. See less