Today we’d like to introduce you to Leon Chaffee.
Hi Leon, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My artistic journey began at a very young age; I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember. I started making pictures of my favorite animals over and over as a young child; at home, in class, it was all I wanted to focus on. This continued on until I got my own dog at ten, and she became the subject of most of my childhood drawings. I probably drew her hundreds of times and never got tired of it. Cycling through different mediums and experimenting with a subject I was comfortable with did wonders for my ability to adapt to the pitfalls of trying new styles as well as my patience. As silly as it is, that repetition ended up serving me in the long run since I learned the crazy amount of time it takes for each pencil stroke to come together into something cohesive.
Once I got to high school I enrolled in art classes that focused specifically on pencil drawing since it was my favorite at the time. A medium that was easy to access at all times during school hours? Perfect. Unfortunately for me, the only thing we focused on in these classes for all four years of high school was realism. Don’t get me wrong, realism is all well and good and is super important for growing your chops and learning the rules so you can break them later on, but I was bored. I wanted to make something that was more raw and put how I felt to paper. All the ugliness I felt brewing within me had to go somewhere, right? My schizoaffective diagnosis at sixteen, and the realities of growing up queer in the South influenced this mindset and began to exert heavy pressure on my subject matter and style choices. Instead of puppies and portraits, I began making unsettling pieces full of faces and the things I was experiencing daily. The catharsis was incredible and my mission with the things I created began to evolve towards giving that same release to the viewer.
With this new goal in mind I began devoting more time to my art. I went off to university for four years, and focused on ancient poetry and literature. The immutable human experience encapsulated in this art from thousands of years ago deeply affected me. These people were screaming into the void just like me; hear me, know me, understand what I’m going through. I wanted that. I began chasing that ability to communicate something so integral to existing as a person on this earth. I funneled my own life and emotions into my work hoping to leave a mark, prove I was here, and connect with the deeper ties that bind us all together.
After I graduated, I started a small Instagram page to archive the pieces I was making and with the hope of advertising myself. I sold a few pieces and picked up some commissions, but my best friend was always word of mouth; especially when I moved to Columbus, where I found the most supportive community I could ask for. I made friends with local artists and took the critiques and advice from them to heart in order to keep growing. The community and connection I get from these relationships strengthens my resolve to share my experience.
As of now, I am still trying to establish myself as a serious artist in the Columbus scene, and am incredibly grateful to all the friends and mentors who have supported and helped me get to this point.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It definitely has not been a smooth road, but I think that the struggles I went through helped me evolve as an artist.
My childhood was spent in turmoil. I was queer and living in Texas, raised in a heavily religious environment. I wanted to reject the pieces of myself that were said to be wrong. Why was I like this? Was I going to hell? This was the start of my more emotional pieces, using my limited knowledge and perspective to purge these feelings. Now, I’m proud to be queer, to be openly trans, and spread awareness of the damage that can be caused by intolerance. I’m done cutting off pieces of myself to conform to an idea of who I should be. I am no one but myself, and I make art to embrace the things both good and bad, that contributed to who I am today.
As I mentioned previously, I was diagnosed with schizoaffective as a teenager. This led to being extremely overmedicated on sedatives to manage my symptoms. Days passed in a blur, months even, while I fought my own mind and I began using art more and more as an escape. I fell quickly down the rabbit hole of suicidal ideation, going through some of the darkest years of my life. After I settled down in Columbus, I began channeling this twisted, tormented side of myself into more and more personal pieces.
Once I got my prescriptions toned down into something that actually helped me (and lots of work on my own thought processes), I began reflecting on the years that had led me to this point. I know for a fact that there are others out there with the chains of suicidal thoughts weighing them down in a sea of uncertainty and depression. I’ve been there. I want to bring the dark into the light in all its ugly glory. We are here, and we will survive.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m known for using bold and bright colors to juxtapose the unsettling nature of my pieces. Oil pastels are my medium of choice as they allow me to be tactile; smearing my fingers, spreading thick oily pigment on the canvas and letting the process calm my mind. I focus on self portraits. The faces that you see in my work are me. Screaming, sobbing, laughing and everything in between, running the whole gamut in quick succession. With every portrait, I want to express a feeling. Something uncomfortable and unsettling, with the vibrancy throwing each emotion into the spotlight.
Most of my compositional ideas come from the things I interact with and experience on a daily basis: faces melting and pushing out from walls, textures morphing into expressions, and whispers echoing in my ears. This torrent of stimuli isn’t accessible to anyone else, and as harsh and jarring as it can be, I’m thankful for the ability to take it and mold it into something that is available to others. Schizotypal illnesses are heavily stigmatized and even feared, but I want to show people that there is beauty in the chaos. My art is an extension of myself, screaming my experience into the world and grasping for connection and understanding.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
If you want to support me, give me a follow on my Instagram and take a look at my corpus. This is also where I post whenever featured at a gallery so you can come see my work in person and get to know me and my mission. DM me to organize a commission, I customize my pieces based on each customer and always strive to make something that tracks with the vision while preserving my unique style.
I would also love to collaborate with local artists on larger pieces or murals. The queer community is so vibrant in this city and I want to celebrate it and bring light to our struggles. Fellow queer and neurodivergent artists please contact me if you’re interested in working together!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: chaffee_artistry
