LEIGH
STENSON
I grew up in a house with a barn, backed up to a wet Washington forest. Everything dripped and drew curves, heavy from the rain. Green plants reaching up towards an almost always grey sky. I would run barefoot, sucking dew drops off pine needles, licking slugs, and in the summertime, filling pockets and cheeks with ripe blackberries
I create as a reaction to the world I witness all around me. A spider building its web against a dusty purple sky, something opalescent and impossibly small, the look on her face before we kiss, the feeling you get when you see somewhere new for the first time, an old favorite scent wavering on the wind and gone the next moment, the taste of a dew drop licked from a spring rose. I create to make room for these sensations and to birth more of them. I create to perpetuate magic. My art is my devotional practice, a prayer + one of the many ways I cultivate a living sense of gratitude.
I love stories. Storytelling is what pulls me to create. When you chose to include an object in an image, it alters the story, even if ever so slightly. Image making is story telling in physical form. Whether it is giving voice to something real and true or creating a window into another world. It creates an opportunity for conversation, and from conversation comes story.