ABOUT

My name is Leopi Lein Nicola Sanderson-Edmunds. 

I am a self taught painter.

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The passage way series.

My paintings I see as a form of primitive surrealism, working most often with archetypes. The paintings  are  playful, visceral, intense, sensual, pensive and often with some form of subtle humour. 

Each painting comes through me almost like a messenger.  I feel I am essentially a channel of these wonderful messengers. The "beings" that come to me and through me, within each of the paintings, are story tellers  themselves.  The presence and character of each individual within the painting is truly unique. I most often have no idea who they are.

The beings that I present, are always in some form of movement, action, or a movement into a pause of movement, a moment of dance, perhaps a meditation or prayer.

I see and paint them engaging with the us as we engage with them.

My work needs to be presented as one large installation piece within a large sacred space. A contemporary place of prayer.

The paintings belong to one another, representing a journey through a life time of the human race.  They carry us through different experiences of being human, in the form of body,  but it is our exhalted body.  Each painting is representing an Archetype.  This is a body of work about our one human community and our human connections.

There is no identification or importance here of what race or skin tone or timeline or culture or religion we are in.

Here in my world, We all belong in each of these bodies and faces.  Our grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, sister, brother etc, etc.

What is important to me,  is the timelessness of our story as a human,  that we all share together.

Our common story is ancient as it is also modern. Our story is a continuum of our resilience, but also of Love between us and in in us.

 The paintings are holding our dark and bright secret spaces of being in this human experience.

This is a unlimited series of archetypes and infinite ideas of work which will continue to grow.

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It is my hope that we experience a moment of self reflection as we stand with them. Are they looking at us? while we are looking at them? what do they think of us? not just what do we think of them?

It is also most important to me, that we release our shame of our human body, of ourselves naked and pure and also of his or her genitals.

We see here, the body as whole and beautiful and resilient, genitals and all. Our body as our sacred temple, and, it is.

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The colours are very important to me, and began in my imagination, along time ago through my vivid childhood dream time, which was always a profound vivid color experience. The range of blue, I struggle to capture, and to remember and blue inspires me in most of my paintings. Also the range of orange and gold, and deep rose have come through me from nature. It is like tasting the most delicious food when I works with Color.

My story:

Both my parents are artists and so, since the beginning of me landing on this earth, and all that I can remember, my art school began and continued at home. My parents, their friends and community of of artists and scientists  and philosophers,  surrounded my young world. I am grateful for this fortunate beginning.

​Drawing and painting was simply what I did all the time.  I also interestingly, always seemed to draw and paint the nude body? even as a very small child. The body always fascinated me. I also often painted animals, especially cats being embodied. What really fascinated me all my life until now, and what I wanted to tune into since a child was what our "body~being" was capable of. 

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One of my favourite pastimes as a child would be to study the movement and energetic body of animals.

I liked to track animals and pets and watch and explore every movement and action and then draw this.

As a child, I always wanted to understand the experience of being in an animal body too.  So I would also paint explore this in my paintings. 

Some people have asked me if my paintings are Shamanic. I think I am simply tuning in to some other energetic dimension of being in a body,  that is either human or animal, and that can become very tangible to me. I also see this more clearly with the work that I do as an ortho-bionimist. I think sadly, it is something we have all forgotten in our modern world. There is also exploration of the possibility of shapeshifting. 

I also see such power and truth in the body~being from the perspective of being a midwife  A woman in labor is one fo the most gorgeous, honest, centred, moments of primal wisdom  I have ever seen. This inspires me to paint, what others cannot see. A  secret, pure, and mysterious world that I am allowed into and as a midwife and a artist. I am deeply touched and inspired by this path.

By the way. I belong to no particular spiritual philosophy but my own.

My Story

Visual Arts was always present in my life, because my father was a film maker and photographer. Equally creative though, was my mother a modern ballet dancer, who deeply influenced me with movement, play, form and expression, and creativity. We played dance, movement and theater as a family.

Both my parents were very agile, so my twin sister and I are too. Joy of movement was a very natural way to be together and to have fun.

My father, did not believe in conventional Art schools for painting, although he was a professor of film at the Slade Film School, Harvard and then California Institute of the Arts?​  in fact, looking back, he discouraged me from going to painting school at all.  He wanted me to study asnd study but with myself.

I was always quite talented, drawing and painting and movement. My father was concerned art school, would ruin the imagination I had, and also my unique style and my creative Spirit. So I did not go.

It certainly took a moment as I grew up into a woman,  to feel any confidence or belonging to the art scene and even with other painters,  since I am self taught. 

No matter what, this creative connection and communication from my inner world to my outer world, simply needed and needs to pour out of me. I also am extremely compelled to paint on a large scale. I paint large canvases.

Also! I have  been a  Homebirth midwife since 1984. I am also a Ortho-Bionomy practitioner -  somatic body therapist/healing hands kind of person. My German grandmother was also a  healer and she influenced me as atelier quite a lot.  

The Holistic body-mind- Spirit- connection, is very much what is integrating and weaving in and out of my work as a painter.

What I see in my hands and in the primal moments of Life, I paint on a canvas. When I work with the body in therapy, I see dimension, depth, viscera and bone,  of energy and matter,  light and dark channels that shirt and open,  like rivers and canyons and springs of water? 

 When I paint, I see Color, light, depth,  space, structure, and I interplay with both being a body therapist and as painter at all times. This inner healing perspective brings me an expression of hope and Love into each paintings. 

I might even like to imagine that the paintings are a form of healing within themselves, to share with the seer. Perhaps that is the purpose of my messengers. They are an offering, a reminder to self correction, self alignment and healing to the seer.

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Born:

Cambridge, England

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Living spaces:

London, Germany,

Cambridge, MA, Hollywood, CA, Big Sur, CA, Santa Fe, NM, New Orleans, LA, Northern California, Bay Area,

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Family:

European, Australian and American citizenship, Father Australian, filmmaker, painter, poet. Mother German, modern ballet dancer Fraternal twin, jeweler, artist.

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Education:

BA in studio painting and psychology, Art therapy concentration - self taught painter. Ortho-bionomy practitioner, homeopath, Licensed home birth midwife  since 1984,  New Mexico, Louisiana, Texas and California.

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 The Passage Way series paintings that represent the Sacred Feminine and the Sacred Masculine.

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Painters influences:

Painters: Odilon Redon, William Blake, Gustave Moreau, Giotto, Wassily Kandinsky, Leonor Fini, Igor Tarkovsky and Sergei Paradjanov, Russian icons and the Symbolist painters and now Hilma of Klint.

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The Passage Way Series
Description: 43 Large figurative paintings each exploring the contrast and vibrancy of the two opposing colors of blues and oranges to gold.
Life size and Larger than life, so that they may relate to us through their body directly to our body, as if we are only a thin membrane of separation apart. We are watching them as they are watching us.

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Colors and meaning of:

The Color in the paintings are to harmonize and calm the soul/Spirit. During a difficult time of racism, mysogyny, sexism, war, homelessness, earth and planetary dysfuntion, too much technology and materialism, we slowly forget our humanity and our connectedness to one another, to nature and the other Beings.

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Technique
the medium is Golden acrylic paint.
Copper leaf
Each painting has many layers of color beginning with one solid base of color. Most paintings take about one to three months to complete.

Blue Spectrum
Represents the masculine tone, grandfather, father, son. Humanity.
Water, the Moon and Mercury, the higher mind, the potential mind, philosophy, spirituality, The Hermit, Inner life, Alchemy, silver. fluidity, storms, peace and war. No death. Love and Mercy. Blue is science. honour, protection and integrity.

Orange Spectrum
Represents the feminine tone, Grandmother, mother, daughter.
the Sun, Fire, rich earth, transformation, creation, alchemy too, gold, courage, action, stillness and being, regeneration, energy, nurturing, destroying, birth and death. Love, Compassion, protection.

The orange and blue are the ting/ yang and is the dynamic force that makes everything turn, hum, purr and throb. Unseen but ever present, perfect balance, in each of us and in nature.
Together they grow green.
 

Hands and Feet are accentuated, representing the importance of them as tools for us to experience life, love and action upon earth.

Rose Spectrum:
Rose represents the embodiment of Spirit and Passion, such as ecstasy, tenderness, sensuality, sexuality, deep gratitude, Love, Mercy, desire, vulnerability, surrender and the experience of intimacy with self and others. Passion expands the realm of experience and the experience is always now. Rose comes as a quiet, intoxicating secret force from the warm breath of Life. Our Senses, respiration, heartbeat, heart, inner womb space. Rose is the sensation of touch through the senses of the body and the heart.
 

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