Board Member Spotlight: Leigh Werrell
By Noah Kocher, ArtWell Intern
As a poet, I’m always asking myself why I write, and when I talk to other artists that’s what I ask them, too: why are you doing this? What about your art compels you to spend hours and hours of emotionally and technically difficult practice perfecting it? What’s the secret about this thing we give so much time to? Recently, I met with ArtWell board member and Philadelphia artist Leigh Werrell to talk about her artistic practice, and her answers to that question have led me closer to my own answer than I’ve ever been.
We spoke over Zoom in the late afternoon, Leigh in her studio in front of a large, unfinished painting, with smaller pieces on the wall behind her, and me on the couch in my comparatively drab living room. By way of introduction, Leigh told me about growing up in North Carolina, about her one year old, and about her show at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Manayunk (on now until October 18th).
Between her time with ArtWell in 2013 and her recent return as a board member, Leigh worked primarily in art sales before transitioning to focus on her own artwork. In particular, she mentioned her time as the Art Sales Manager at PAFA and, in that time, her close work with the Brodsky Center, which highlights women artists and artists of color.
In her artistic practice, Leigh is primarily an oil painter, and her work focuses on her own life and what she observes in her everyday world. She told me that her work isn’t politically or socially argumentative, other than its insistence on the social and political reality of the experiences that she has—as a woman, in the landscape of her community, and with the people around her. In the past year, she’s painted many scenes from her home and from walks with her one year old: her baby’s room at night, a green lawn behind a green fence. Her eye, she said, is guided by color and composition, by the beautiful and aesthetically interesting images around her. Her hope for her art is that someone who sees it can relate to it, visually or emotionally. That’s what art is, Leigh told me: art is relating to other people. We want to be understood, and art gives us an avenue to understand each other.
Leigh said that her work with ArtWell matches all of those artistic values and allows her to help spread them, along with the practice of art, to students. “It’s a fulfilling project,” she said. Leigh’s personal values—including community, connection, and creativity especially—resonate with ArtWell’s six institutional values: imagination, social justice, spirituality, community, healing, and love. I asked Leigh about this resonance, and she noted two of ArtWell’s values that connect with her in particular. She highlighted imagination first, saying, “what would the world be like without imagination?” The smallest acts of imagination, like choosing colors for a painting, lead to the largest, like imagining a more just world, Leigh told me. Imagination is the only way that we’ll move forward together, and the ability to imagine the perspectives of others is critical for community-building as well. Leigh also highlighted social justice, saying that her commitment to ArtWell is motivated in large part by her commitment to, “being a fighter for those who can’t fight or don’t have the means that I do.”
Leigh’s description of her artistic practice paints a clear path: from the smallest sorts of imagination, to works of art, to relation and understanding with others, to community, and to a just community that fights for its members. This is ArtWell’s mission, and, as an artist myself, I feel more clarity about my artistic purpose than ever, having heard Leigh’s perspective. Be sure to check out her exhibition at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Manayunk, on display now until October 18th!