In the basement of a quiet country home near High Shoals, Leslie Moody is engaged in an epic struggle. She labors feverishly at her easel. With a brush, she jabs paint onto a composition. She prods paint with a tissue. She stands back, brow furrowed. Now, she applies more color, urgently, intensely. Leslie Moody is battling past her inner demons on the way to creating art.
Originally, from Ohio, Moody moved to Atlanta in 1969, working as a dental hygienist. While there, she met her husband, Lee, a musician. After more than a decade in the city, the couple relocated in the Monroe area. She was first moved to paint professionally in 2003, when she saw a computer printout of a composition of sheep. Instantly, Moody had a revelation, she says, “I wanted desperately to paint those sheep.”
And so she did. Before she knew it, she had also completed two more paintings, one of elephants and another, an arrangement of pipes. She entered all three works to a juried show at Linden House in Athens, winning three honorable mentions. From that point on, her passion for painting grew. “I would be out in the car,” she smiles, “and I couldn’t wait to get back and paint.“
To see her work, images of big-eyed animals, flowers, fruit, people and even pieces of plumbing, one would never guess that conflict plays such a central role in their creation. But according to Moody, she descends to her basement studio in strife and returns renewed and at peace, enjoying a kind of rebirth. “It calms me,” she says. “The whole experience settles my turmoil.”
While engaged in conversation, it’s hard to imagine Moody as being, well, moody. A girlish 60, with coal black hair and an impish grin, she laughs easily and admits to wide-eyed wonder when it comes to art. “I’m like a child in a candy store,” says Moody, referring to her work.
Indeed, there is a kind of childlike innocence to many of her works, with their gentle scenes of cattle communing, garrulous ganders, bowls of glowing fruit or, say, a big blue bull adrift in a blazing field of red and gold. And in many of these paintings, the eyes of Moody’s subjects draw in the viewer with their gentle gaze. “The kindness created in the art is something I need to receive,” she says and explains that this same compassion is extended somehow to the viewer.
Maybe that explains the magnetism of her art. Today, Moody’s paintings hang in homes, businesses and galleries throughout the area. A recent showing of her work at The Twisted Oak Woodfire Grill in Monroe resulted in the sale of over a dozen paintings. “It’s almost like Leslie Moody and Twisted Oak are magic,” explains Nancy King, proprietor. “I’ve lost count of the number of her pieces we’ve sold.”
Another surprising aspect of Moody’s work is that she avoids canvas, choosing instead to paint on wood board. It helps that her husband, Lee’s workshop provides her plenty of free material to work with. She says she likes the layering effect she achieves on it with acrylic paint. Also, she enjoys adding tissue, cardboard or other mixed media to her works. “It’s texture, color and composition that draw me,” says Moody.
Disarmingly unpretentious, Moody admits to a certain vulnerability in exhibiting her work to the judgment of others. Yet, her jaw is set when she states, “I’m not about to let it stop me.”
Leslie Moody is committed to do battle, creating art out of chaos out in the countryside.
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Photo & Copywriting Credit: Phil Lanier
Printed in The Walton Tribune, Sunday October 21, 2007
