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LESLIE EHRIN FINE ART
This series of original oil and acrylic paintings and limited edition giclee prints represent a portion of a body of work created between the years 2002-2008 by Artist, Writer and Photographer, Leslie Ehrin. Leslie has been painting since she was sixteen months old and her mother started her painting in the bathtub on sheets of newsprint taped to the walls, surrounded by paintbrushes and babyfood jars full of tempra paint.
View Original Paintings By Leslie Ehrin
Leslie became a Landscape painter after graduation from The University of Pennsylvania and four years at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Certificate Program as graduate study. She started painting Tuscany and The Italian Riviera some years after that, following the abrupt breakup of a relationship. When the man she had been dating decided suddenly to marry someone else, Leslie joined a childhood friend in Nice, France, and drove The Riviera from along the Coast Road from Ville France Sur Mer to Monacco and Menton, across the border to the Cinqueterre and Portofino in a rickety van. At Portofino, it became apparent that Leslie preferred traveling solo. After visiting Porto Venere, La Spezia and the Carrara Marble mountain region, where her ancestor, George Gordon Lord Byron liked to visit, Leslie and her traveling companion parted company at the Florence train station. Leslie checked her bags at a nearby hotel, and rented a Vespa moped. From that point on, she toured the Chianti countryside from Florence to San Gimignano, Volterra, further onto Siena and south to Rome with camera, sketchpad, watercolors and some clothes on the back of a moped. The resulting series hence became known as "On The Road to San Gimignano." Some people have commented that Leslie paints the Italian landscape the way it "feels" not just the way it looks. This is due in part to the fact that she really "felt" the texture of the landscape while traveling on the moped.
In 2001, Leslie returned to the same region, accompanied by thirteen other artists from The Wayne Art Center to paint at a villa in the Val de Cecina ( Valley of the Sea) some ninety minutes south of Florence. Older and wiser then, transportation during that trip was by car.
The concept of being In Search of a City on a Hill has metaphorical meaning to the Artist. The Italian excursions were not only journeys which involved challenges related to finding the right roads to medieval hilltowns throughout Tuscany, but of the subtler and more complex routes one takes in the process of searching for, discovering and arriving at a new place within the Self, along the way gaining psychological ground and a new perspective.
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