Daphne Leighton: Mixed media 

 

31st March - 10th April 2022

​

What concerns me above all are questions about relationships, the contact between people and places as they struggle to either meet or separate. Perhaps these stem from my relatively recent remarriage with the resulting constant movement between England where I was born and Israel where I have lived for over forty years. 

 

For the last few years I have been preoccupied with relationships through mixed media, bringing objects into my work, combinations of found pieces of old wood and tree bark and thin pieces of rusty metal. These bring to the work something of the past both through colour and texture. When I find suitable pieces and place them on the canvas, they speak to me and to each other. Playing with their positions on the canvas enables me to go beyond conscious thought. I use the pieces in the shape in which I find them as if each has its own right to exist. After gluing to the canvas I often surround them in plaster so that all is on the same level. 

 

An important focus is the relationship between the wood and metal and the paint with which I surround them. Paint allows me to further explore through colour and texture. I use both oil and acrylic, enjoying the different possibilities each has to offer in creating mood and meaning. Often, I have already decided what I am going to do but my hands (or head) decide something else. I hope to create an integrated world in which the viewer can find his/her own place and meaning.