Stacy Leigh

(b. 1971) in Long Island, NY

Lives and works in New York City

Stacy Leigh, a self-taught artist, builds up her acrylic and oil paintings over time and finishes them with a glaze in the tradition of Old Master paintings. The color palette in these works contributes to their unique energy. Leigh uses background colors to create undulating waves of tones. Their values gradiate as they pulse farther from the subject, recalling aura photographs. Jewel-like blues and deep maroons create a ghostly and mysterious tenor, and help to create an atmosphere of nowhere. She delicately renders the slightest details with tenderness: networked veins run below the translucent skin; the imprint of a bikini tan-line suggest a sunburn and constellations of freckles sprinkled with care. Each painting suggests a story with no certainty, offering only clues and narrative speculation. Are these figures sexual avatars, or tense young women? These works sit in the uncanny valley of representation, eliciting, at once, empathy and mystery, desirability and emptiness.