Today we’d like to introduce you to Leigh Brooklyn.
Hi Leigh, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I come from a very blue collar family, mainly farmers, factory workers, and military. We never went to galleries or museums growing up. All our family vacations were to things like war battlefields and monuments which I absolutely hated at the time, though perhaps that influenced my work today. The only exposure I had to the arts was through art at the local county fair or some kitschy magazine that sold art reprints and garden gnomes. I knew nothing and didn’t think it could be a career.
Then in high school an art teacher entered a painting into the Scholastics Art and Writing Awards without my knowledge and I received best of show and won at nationals. I realized then that maybe I was better than I thought. After that I did a whole series then of surrealistic self portraits and won countless awards in Scholastics locally and nationally and in many other competitions for my work during my last two years of high school. My junior year in high school I was finally able to go to New York for my art and my eyes lit up as I was seeing the art world for the first time. I was seeing all the galleries a museums in New York City for the first time. I felt like I finally found my calling and started looking at art schools that year. I knew I wanted to be an artist.
I earned a degree in Biomedical Illustration from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2011 after being inspired to do forensic art. I saw on the news how someone was identified using a facial reconstruction from the skull and I thought that would be really cool to do. I bought a whole book on it before attending CIA. At school we did everything from working with the natural history museum to drawing cadavers and illustrating surgeries live in the operating room. It was a really cool and really challenging major. I interned with the Cleveland Clinic, several research facilities and created freelance illustrations for the Gastroenterology Department at University Hospitals.
Immediately after graduation I ended up moving around the country, I moved around 15 times during a 10 year period. Life was very “different” during that time and it was difficult to work, especially in the medical illustration field. But I did see a lot. I saw different art markets, I was able to visit Art Basel while living in Miami – which opened my eyes again, this time to the high end art market. When living in Los Angeles, seeing that I couldn’t pursue medical illustration, I began doing street photography to get reference material for figurative oil painting. I would street cast people and do shoots right there on the spot. That helped me with approaching people and accepting rejection because half the people would say no. I did manage to get some great material. I’d go through places like Skid Row and talk to a lot of people. My work at this time focused a lot on marginalized individuals and sharing their story. Eventually I ended up back in my hometown where I studied under a very well respected sculptor who taught me everything for clay sculpture to be used in making large scale bronze figures. The only thing I didn’t learn from him was the welding for the armatures.
In late 2019 I had a personal upheaval that changed the trajectory of my life. I lost about everything at that time and had to start my life over from below zero. Over the ten year period prior I had lost connections with about everyone I once knew and didnt know very many people anymore. I also hadn’t really worked during that time. It was a very challenging time. I realized that nobody was coming to rescue me and I had to get out there and make something happen. Nobody would help me if they didnt even know I existed. I started going to every art event I could to meet as many people as I could. Then a couple months later Covid happened and everything shut down. My whole life was turned upside down at this point but I didnt let that stop me, I continued entering art calls online. I was entering about five things a week. I tried to do all the virtual art talks that I could. Eventually stuff started opening up slowly and I was able to show my work in my city for the first time. That’s when my name really started to get out there again.
I started a new series at this time. I was going through so much and needed to surround myself with strong women. I decided I’d build this sort of army of women. I began reaching out to a few older friends that I hadn’t seen since high school and I started meeting new people that were referred to me. I asked them to model for a series titled “The Women’s Militia” and began dressing them as soldiers, photographing them in these different abandoned landscapes filled with colorful graffiti. It was so beautiful to see their expressions change when dressed as these modern day warriors. They became so empowered. I began using those images as reference for paintings, drawings and most recently sculpture. The series was to represent the strength of women despite all the battles we fight, and to show how much stronger we are when we come together.
I made the work about women’s role in contemporary society. I feel it’s important for work to reflect what is happening right now around us in our current time. I created a piece titled “American Portrait” which was about some of the biggest mass shootings today and a piece titled “Pietà” referencing Michaelangelo’s famous sculpture under the lens of the Black Lives movement.
I expanded on the idea of the militarized female soldier and began painting on grenades creating, “Love Bombs” in early 2021 that touches on abuse and toxic situations. Love Bombing is a manipulation technique that a lot of abusers use to overwhelm their victims with grandiose displays of affection.
A lot of people go through so much silently on their own and I want them to know they’re not alone. I think people, women especially, relate to the work because we’ve all had to fight for something in our lives. We’re much stronger than society gives us credit for. We’re much stronger than we often give ourselves credit for.
I want to change the way women are portrayed in society and in art. We are more than a naked muse in the Metropolitan. In art women are portrayed as either a s*x object, a seductress, a mother or a monster. I’m tired of seeing the passive female that looks delicate because I personally don’t know any. The women I know are out there working, they’re smart and they’re empowered. Women deserve a new narrative.
Currently I’ve just started learning to carve stone. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time and I’m absolutely loving it. I’m planning out a series that combines my skills in stone, clay, welding, painting and drawing. I plan to get more and more into sculpture in the future.
I have four shows lined up for 2024 already and can’t wait to see what opportunities 2024 has for me. I have to say, I’m very proud of how far I’ve come from where I was from only a few years ago.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road most definitely has not been smooth. Immediately after college, I had a 10-year period where I wasn’t really able to work on my art. I was moving constantly, every six to twelve months. I would have my art and my studio boxed up for three to four months at a time, all the time, once for about a whole year straight. It was incredibly difficult to work and there was a lot going on in the background making it extremely hard to focus. Around the end of 2019 I had a personal upheaval and lost almost everything, my home, my dogs, I had no job, I had lost contact with about everyone, I was pretty isolated at that point. This was one of the hardest times of my life. I had to get out there and get my name out so people would know me and help me. I didn’t work for about 10 years so with no experience and no contacts nobody wanted to hire me, especially during COVID’s record unemployment. So, I started applying to everything I could and attending openings. It was really challenging to do that with so much going on behind the scenes. When COVID happened the art world shut down and I had to pivot again, still dealing with everything. I continued to apply for virtual shows and eventually stuff started opening up again. I was finally able to show my work in my hometown around 2021 for the first time ever. Things progressed and continue to do so. It feels slow in the moment but fast when I look back. I feel like I’m getting back on the track that I was on in high school when I was just out there, hustling and making it happen. A lot has changed since 2020 for me, almost everything, and I’m really proud of myself for how far I’ve come. I’m really excited for the future. I always say how blessed I feel for all the amazing people that have come into my life. I’m just getting started.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a multidisciplinary artist, so I work in a lot of different mediums. I started doing a lot of digital art around the time that I studied biomedical illustration. That major was almost entirely digital. The professors would give us a surgery to learn, a new software to learn and tell us it was due next week. So, we had to figure all that out and come up with something. And we still had all of our other coursework on top of that. I also traveled and moved all over the US and did street photography in different areas that I lived in, so I’d go through downtown Los Angeles and experience places like Skid Row. I taught myself oil painting; I never did a single painting or sculpture during my time at the Cleveland Institute of Art, so that was a lot of trial and error. Years later I was lucky enough to understudy a really great sculptor and he taught me different techniques in clay and mold making and casting. Then I went into welding and got my certification in that. It was a full-on structural welding program; I was the only artist in there. But I wanted to really learn how to do it so I could build strong supports for my sculpture and at the very least make sure people I might hire down the road are doing it right. And finally, I’ve most recently started an apprenticeship doing stone carving and masonry. I absolutely love it. I’ve been wanting to do this a really long time and it’s an incredible opportunity. I believe down the road all my different areas of study will come together in a really unique and wonderful way.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I think most people don’t know that I play any instruments. I turn to music to relax when I’m in between art projects or generally just stressed. I play some on the piano, the ukulele, and learning the guitar a bit. The art though I love it, at times can be stressful with deadlines among other things. But the music is just for me, there’s no pressure, no desire to be the top musician. I really just enjoy it.
I also really enjoy learning other languages along with learning about other cultures, which goes hand in hand. So, I practice learning a language a little bit every day. I first studied Spanish, lately it’s been French, and next will probably be Italian.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.leighbrooklyn.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leighbrooklynart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leighbrooklynart
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leighbrooklyn
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/WLeighBrooklyn
Image Credits
Leigh Brooklyn
