Leah Gertzen
Sweetest Con comes out of the night. I began creating this project last April; I saw it as some glowing, golden, warm place, where long grass grew and the sunrise shone through the willows.
Throughout my BFA I have created three series containing homes; White Lie (2020-2022), representing loss, Miriam (2022-) representing exile, and Sweetest Con (2023-), representing peace, warmth and a quiet life. These homes were built of what I was feeling at the time, and a different fictional woman lives in each house. There is little connection to reality in my work outside of nature and symbolism; each story is my own. With Sweetest Con I did not want to so much tell a story than live in one, and for the past year I have “lived” within the cabin, creating and building everything by hand.
Sweetest Con holds all I have made, seen, felt, dreamed.
always,
forevermore
About
Leah Gertzen (b. 2001, Winnipeg MB) is an interdisciplinary artist working with painting, textiles and installation. Thematically, Leah’s practice is centered around nature, dreams, symbolism, and personal storytelling through fiction. In February 2024 she opened her first solo show, Night Comes In, at the University of Manitoba Student Gallery, which featured artwork in painting, textiles, sculpture, ceramic and installation spanning from the 2nd-5th years of her degree. Following graduation from the University of Manitoba School of Art, Leah hopes to be a working and exhibiting artist.
Artist Statement
My artistic practice has developed as a way to live within my work. Through a combination of acrylic painting, textiles and installation I build atmospheres for the work to exist in, and for the viewer to experience the work in. Painting is the beginning for any work made in textiles and installation, both of which allow me to focus more intensely on an idea.
My process contains little research outside of symbolism, and for this reason my work is deeply personal. Many of my ideas come from my dreams, and through how I experience life. Emotions play an integral role in the production of my art, specifically in the creation of landscapes.
Thematically, I am inspired by dreams and the surreal scenes that come with them, by nature and how landscape can be used to express emotion and tell stories, and by symbolism and its use in forming meaning beyond the surface of the artwork. Since 2018 my work has revolved around stories of women; both of myself and fictional women that I have created. These stories contain deeply personal narratives translated to fiction.
The creation of art is a magical experience for me, and I hope for the viewer to feel what I do when I create art, which is an old, magical feeling.