I’ve come across several artists who paint underwater figurative scenes, but Anne Leone, who began painting them 30 years ago, is a master of the craft. She began exploring the motif when her daughter was born, wanting to create paintings that were very expressive and personal, yet universal. Swimming seemed to tick all the boxes. Back then, she also liked the metaphorical underpinnings of water as a symbol of life, emotion, the feminine, purity and transformation, concepts that resonated with her as a new mother.
Corazon de Paraiso #18, acrylic on linen, 48 x 112 in.
Leone started out painting single figures in ordinary swimming pools but while hiking in the jungle of the Yucatan Peninsula, she and her family stumbled upon locals swimming in a “pond” and joined them. She didn’t know it then, but she was swimming in a cenote, a natural sinkhole that exposes freshwater aquifers when the limestone bedrock collapses, revealing the water-filled cavern below. These Mexican cenotes have been the setting for her paintings ever since.
Cenote Azul #46, acrylic on linen, 38 x 28 in.
“The environment is like a theater,” she says, explaining that the water is crystal clear, but the concave nature of the cave walls, coated with algae and vegetation, creates a very dark, shadowy effect. “The sun strikes the surface and it coruscates through the water and, with the dark background, you can really see the shaft of light wrap around the form and describe the volumetrics of it, kind of like a spotlight is following them around…With the light streaming down, it almost looks like they’re flying.”
Capturing the fullness of form and the watery depths is crucial to Leone and, a perfectionist by nature, she works meticulously until she gets it just right. “And yet I’m also really interested in the transition between the bodies being buoyant in the water and the surface of the water which you see from below. The reflections are slippery, abstract, playful. It’s the comparison between those two things that’s really special.”
Cenote Azul #49, acrylic on linen, 60 x 40 in.
It’s interesting how often Leone uses the word “flying” when describing her swimming scenes, but it’s indicative of the sense of freedom she associates with being in the water, and wants her paintings to evoke a similar feeling in others. Her canvases are often close to life-size, amplifying their impact and inviting people to fully immerse themselves as well. “I want the viewer to think about how it feels to be in the water, to move around in the water, be suspended in the water…there’s a kind of sensory activation that happens—it’s a heightened environment. You’re free and able to move around without gravity pulling you down. It’s accessible…people know the feeling of being in the water. I think as a young artist I thought a lot more about metaphor and meaning,” Leone continues. “Now I’m more interested in exploring how something makes you feel, how it reminds you of some sensory experience, an experience that can’t really be explained with words…isn’t that what art is?”
Corazon del Paraiso #17, acrylic on linen, 58 x 60 in.
Over time, Leone’s paintings have evolved into complex many-figured compositions, like Corazon del Paraiso #18, a 48-by-112 inch canvas. As if remembering how challenging the piece was, she says, “There are a lot of bodies in that one…it’s a parade of bodies really.”
Her August show at CK Contemporary in San Francisco will feature a dozen or so new paintings that represent two and a half years of work. Changing subject matter isn’t anything to take lightly and, fortunately, Leone has no desire to.
“Each painting I start I feel like I’m learning something new,” she says. “I have a relationship with each one; they can take four months, sometimes longer. It’s a big commitment so changing my imagery would be a big deal. Today I was painting and needed to find a different pattern of light across a body, so I was looking through my files, and I just kept coming across interesting images and thinking, I’m going to do this one next. I guess I’m very dedicated to the idea.”
Leone’s exhibition Cenotes opens with a reception on August 9 from 5 to 8 p.m. and remains on view through September 7. —
CK Contemporary 246 Powell Street • San Francisco, CA 94102 • (415) 397-0114 • www.ckcontemporary.com
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