More from our Art Cocoon Featured Artist, Alice Leese! Alice visits the places she wants to paint and creates plein air studies and graphite drawings of the area. Studies can either be simple lines of the natural movement she sees in landscape or a detailed illustration. Taking these studies back to her studio, Alice then creates finished art from her memories of the area along with her drawings and paintings. These works, the sketch and final painting shown, are from the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii.
See more of what Alice is doing at www.aliceleese.com
“This painting depicts the Kilauea Caldera and the Halema’uma’u Crater in Hawaii. In 2018 the Volcano erupted and there was visible lava for about a year. The lava flow stopped shortly before my National Parks Arts Foundation residency. This made painting the crater and caldera challenging because it was really a series of gray values with light values of steam vents.
The large Kilauea painting is 30″x120″, on three panels. In addition to the Kilauea Caldera and the Halema’uma’u Crater, the painting features the Ohi’a Lehua plant in the foreground. This is the first plant to grow on a fresh lava flow. A hearty plant, it provides a nursery for other plants, is very adaptable and can take many forms including growing tall or staying a shrub.
The National Parks Arts Foundation gives artists the gift of time to create in our great National Parks, Monuments and Historical Sites. Spending a month in a National Park gives the artist context…a more complete picture of the landscape, history, and people, to create authentic works of art.”
See more of what Alice is doing at www.aliceleese.com