Leat Silvera
I was six when my dad came into my room carrying a sketchbook bigger than me and a broken tin box with used art pencils inside. He found them leaning on a black trash container in the back alley and thought I would like them. It warms my heart that he knew me, before I even knew myself. I drew everyday, and all day Saturdays while my parents worked. My art became the quiet place where I met my soul and life was good.
Six years later my family went from five to four. I became the oldest child when my big brother was tragically killed by a drunk driver. Everything changed, instantly. My art changed with me. I became more abstract and visceral. I found myself in museums, studying and drinking in the emotions of other artists; connecting to our now shared experience of tragedy, turmoil and eventually triumph. Over time I consciously chose to adopt my big brother's attitude, "no guts, no glory" and began to live life with a passion that wrapped every moment in courage and love.
I graduated UCLA in Art & Architecture and married at 20. Blessed with five incredible human beings and homeschooling them kept me physically away from painting, but the longing burned inside me… I continued to study, taking figure drawing, advanced painting, and portrait classes with master artists. Most recently heading into the High Sierra's to study landscape painting with artist Jeremy Lipking. Another dream come true.
The last few years have been unexpectedly stormy. I am now divorced, and a single mom. My Indigo blue paintings from that time period scream intensity, inner pain and struggle. As I've emerged, color has returned. Yet the visceral, fearless movement of the paint and light continues and represents all that I have been through.
A piece of me, a part of my heart and soul, lives in every painting.
Artist statement
I paint moments — a split second, held still long enough to enter and feel.
For most of our lives we are somewhere else: replaying the past, bracing for the future. But once in a while the constraints break open and we are simply here. I believe that is where the sacred lives, and it is the only thing I have ever wanted to paint.
The angels that move through my canvases are not about religion. They are what a moment of true presence feels like — layers of light, color, and gesture, left open, and whatever you carry completes them.
More than anything, I hope my paintings create a place where people can pause — even for a single breath — connect, and know they are never alone.