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Show me the artist?

To talk about one's art is never easy. Many artists would just prefer to say 'Look at my pictures that's all that counts', but that's just a cop out really isn't it? The problem is there are always those listeners who would rather keep interrupting saying 'But', and the frustrated artist ends up wanting to say "Well if you think you can do better do it yourself!" That approach is not always the best and especially so if one's trying to sell their work.
The way I have decided to do it is to tell you just a little bit about my unusual life and the way it has affected my art. I don't read a great deal but I like clever witty writers and science fiction. I think the writer Kurt Vonnegut Jnr would feel quite at home here in cyberspace. In his novel 'Sirens of Titan' he told the future tale of a little boy called Chrono who found a strange pebble in the school playground. He decided to hold on to it as a keepsake and it acted like his lucky charm because not only was he extremely lucky he eventually became the most important man on earth. For him though the crowning achievement of his life he believed was when he heard that aliens from outer space wanted to meet him in person. When they came face to face the spaceman put out his hand demanding that Chrono should hand over his lucky charm as really all it was, was a spare part for their spaceship. Chrono's luck might have made him the most powerful man on this planet but this meant nothing to the aliens because as far as they were concerned it was only a few moments in their world, and it was just the most simple way to move the object from A to B; perhaps somewhere where they could land their spaceship.
Well my life has been a little bit like that, anyway my artistic life certainly has. Instead of a shiny strange coloured pebble my charm has been the tiny innocent idealized girl's face that often follows me from drawing to drawing. I think I first met her in a Picasso drawing of 1919 entitled 'Italian Peasants' when I was trying to find a way to draw faces. She has taken many guises because for me she has become the mysterious women of my art. Whereas Chrono's lucky charm brought him wealth and power my charm is very dark indeed at times for it is a keepsake of the women I have loved. The real femme fatales who through no real fault of their own have brought mostly heartache and loneliness. The trouble is I fall in love too easily and get hurt badly. Sometimes it takes three years to recover from heartbreak, and then it's another two years before I start thinking about finding another lover. Also it's quite funny really for on each occasion the new woman seems to be only slightly older than the previous girlfriend of five years earlier. I am not looking for any sympathy as I enjoy a very good life as a single man, and also because I have no outside commitments I have been able to more or less follow my chosen vocation without too much interruption. It's highly unusual these days for anyone to lead a true artistic way of life and to be a proper self-motivated independent artist. I have plenty of other friends and most of these are women. The other beautiful women though, the one's I hardly dare speak to, they are the objects of my art love and desire. I could quite easily live in a world without men but I couldn't live in a world without women. Many of my wild sexual fantasies don't go far beyond the simple admiration of the female form because for me a slim teenage girl in particular can be just perfection itself. For she has firm breasts which are pert and erect and her still silky smooth skin is magnificent making her a living marble statue. Her stomach is tight and flat and her belly button looks no more out of place than a ticking clock on a mantelpiece; the skin's surfaces still unaffected by the ravages of life like childbirth and toil: A beautiful living machine with moist lips and bright eyes ready to go out into the less than perfect world and maybe, even one day making me very happy. No doubt this romantic notion of life is not reality and not even sensible in the modern world, but art should not be about creating easy to live with wallpaper it should be about erotic and delicious dreams too. Art should be one of the greatest treasures in life something to help us survive in an ever more grey and paranoid world. When Kurt Vonnegut's spacemen next come down to the earth they will judge us harshly for our leaders make war and mankind thrives on cruelty and greed and maybe if they see that we can produce something good as well, just maybe they might spare us from their deadly missiles or sarcasm.
During those angry years of feminism before so called 'girl power' reversed the sentiment and made it cool for women to model themselves on sexually enticing pop stars, 'wonder babes' and super-models, I was sometimes criticized by ladies for having no nude men in my pictures. I guess my answer should have been that the women would no longer have been safe to wander around in my little sacred world without any clothes. So perhaps it was a wise decision that the only person I could really turn to and trust to go naked into my secret world of women was myself. Sometimes I was an angel, sometimes I was a figure of fetish fun: I was even a hermaphrodite with an erect ejaculating penis moving amongst the excited women like a busy humming bird. At more serious times though I was just the artist or even a fully clothed slightly bewildered voyeur.
The fact that I had trouble settling down to work, even at Art College, has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Being only half-trained means I never learnt their correct way to draw, and therefore I found my very own style and set of rules. But I did study; I really did study. No not because I wanted to be a good student. I read every book and studied all the paintings of the artists I most admired. They were my heroes and I dreamed of becoming one of them one day. Maybe that's what I thought about when I first started making the little cartoon like searching drawings that started it off. Obviously I learnt a great deal from those artists too because as well as learning little technical tricks I can mix bit's of symbolism, surrealism, and expressionism together at will. Another lucky twist of fate is that my ever present decorative Art Nouveau Style which gives the drawings their elegance merged itself over the years with my more direct free comic style which not only gives the work a cutting edge it makes it popular too with a younger more radical audience. Yes, I am very lucky. I'm no genius, but should I at last become successful not only will it be a well deserved reward it might show other struggling younger artists that the only thing that really matters is to work. The accumulation of good hard work is a masterpiece in itself.

Exhibitions

Cannock Art Gallery 1978, Amsterdam, The Gallerie Erotique 'D'Lammerberch 1991. Also shown in Annecy (France), The Torture Garden (London), and at Southampton.

FLORENCE BIENNALE: Christopher Leach was one of 900 artists worldwide selected to show their work at this major prestigious event in December 2003. Please kick over the sandcastle to read what eminent critic John T Spike said about the drawings of the artist. Christopher Leach, Jojo, and my art has also been profiled by Wikipedia

My work has also been published in six countries in the following publications.

Twilight (Berlin, Germany) Rouge et Noir (Nantes, France). Some Bizarre, (Stockton on Tees, UK). Unleashed (Leeds, UK.) Jade, Scarborough, UK) Paramour (Cambridge MA/ USA). Bitches with Whips (Seattle, USA). Redemption (Vancouver/ Canada). Fullsize (Rhinefelden), Switzerland).

Artist's own Title:- The Magic 88 and other Poems (Outpost/Walton on Thames, UK)

Purchasing Information

POSTAGE: All prints come unframed and up to six prints can easily be dispatched in a flat reinforced card envelope and are sent by normal domestic post or airmail. Please give the title of the picture if it has one but more importantly give its number. They can be obtained most easily by ordering via my e-mail address: info(at)christopherleach.co.uk

Instructions how to buy from the U.S.A.
$16.00 per print plus post and packing $2.80.
Special offer buy a third print and save $8.00.

United Kingdom £10..00 per print, pay by ordinary Bank Cheque. Please add £1.80 to your total order for postage and packing. Special offer buy 3 prints get discount of £6.00.

European Union Members 12..00 Euros per print. Pay by ordinary Euro Cheque Account. Please add Euros 3.30 to your order for post and packing. Special offer buy three prints and save at total of 7 Euros.

Please note payment can also be made by PayPal at no extra charge if you buy to the value of two prints. Otherwise please add 5% to the cost of the print.

info(at)christopherleach.co.uk

all pictures, photographs and artwork ©christopher leach

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