| Christopher Leach |
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| leach, christopher | |
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He mixes Symbolism , Surrealism , and Expressionism with his distinctive decorative Art Nouveau style, having learned to mix media in creating the Collage s that characterized his early years’ production {Link without Title} . INSPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES Leach identifies these artists as inspirations for and influences upon his own work {Link without Title} :
DESCRIPTION Leach’s work is identified by unusual titles such as ''Teasel Tine and the Toy Boy'','' Black Forest Clinic'', ''Where Do Dreamy Traffic Wardens Go When It Gets Wet'', and ''Fetish Tram''. They are crowded with bizarre figures-- Men , Women , and Transsexual s--who, partly or fully Nude , engage in strange activities that often do not seem to have any relation to the works’ titles. When they do wear clothing, the garb often comprises odd costumes. A female figure central to ''Happy Valley'', for example, wears a Bonnet , a Mask with Antennae which may or may not be intended to represent a Butterfly ; a tall, spiked Collar ; a bustier of sorts, made of crisscrossed laces with cutouts to expose her Breasts ; black Gloves that rise to the middle of her biceps; a garter belt; and fancy mesh Stockings . Her left Arm is around the Shoulders of a smaller male figure who wears dark Sunglasses and a Brassiere , the left strap of which is looped around his left biceps, revealing a breast, and she paints upon his bare Belly while his left hand hovers before his erect Penis . In ''Happy Valley'', the mostly nude male Transvestite whose belly is being painted by the Lady in the mask, high spiked collar, bustier, gloves, and stockings has an erection. The glans looks like a glans, but it also resembles the cleft of a Vagina . This ambiguity of male and female and of Masculine and Feminine is repeated throughout the drawing, as it is in many of Leach’s other sketches. Vaguely penile and vaginal shapes abound, as do suggestions of disembodied Buttocks which sometimes make up parts of the figures and sometimes parts of the Landscape or of the Buildings . Ambiguity is everywhere present, as shapes that first seem to be phallic later appear to be buttocks or breasts and vice-versa. Even inanimate objects, like the Earth itself, are strangely and ambiguously sexualized, even more so than the same objects were sexualized (again, ambiguously) in Beardley’s work. As in Giger’s biomechanical art, Human Beings sometimes merge, literally, with man-made or natural objects. Leach's "surreal illustrated fantasies" of "a world of copiously-breasted Siren s, latex-clad Dominatrix es, and happily humping hermaphrodites" have also been compared to that of the medieval Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch and has been declared "Definitely some of the strangest and more original erotic artwork we've seen in a while" {Link without Title} . THEMES According to Leach, his work is not intended to convey any specific Message . Instead, he says, the images in his drawings "just unfold across the page like energetic surreal daydreams. . . ideas and images just weave themselves together as my Libido and Imagination does the thinking for me" [http://www.incubuschoice.com/closeup_712_en_the_surreal_world_and_art_of_christopher_leach.html . Although Leach denies that his work has any unifying Theme , one such connecting Idea seems to be his work's insistence upon the unity of all things. Rather than depicting a world of distinct and disassociated objects wherein there are clear-cut divisions between the objective and the subjective and among the many and varied categories of existence, Leach's art suggests that such dichotomies and classifications are artificial rather than actual or natural and that, therefore, if they are taken literally, they are false and potentially hazardous. Human figures interact with Plant s and inanimate objects as well as one another. In ''An End to Waiting'', several transvestites wearing nothing but stockings are penetrated per anum by the tendrils of a flowering Vine . Similarly, in ''Jyllinge Girl'', a Flower grows from the small of a back, just below a pair of legs wearing stockings. Bent at the knees, the legs combine to become the forearm of a woman holding a Wand . The back above the buttocks forms the woman’s left shoulder, which is extended straight out from her Body . As the title of another work, ''Cello Woman'', implies, a woman’s upper body forms a Cello . She has no legs, but is supported by a pair of bare feet that grow at the bottoms of her severely truncated thighs. Reading from a sheet of Music on a stand before her, she plays the strings of herself, which emerge from her pubic region, run along the center of her midsection, and merge with the wooden neck of the instrument that rests upon her left shoulder. This image is repeated, with a variation, in ''If I Ruled'', in which a masked, bare-breasted woman holds a cello that consists of a woman’s Torso ; she has neither arms, legs, nor head, and her neck, greatly elongated and wooden, is the neck of the Instrument . In ''Boy Venus 550'', a pair of buttocks, a lower back clad in a Corset , and a pair of upper thighs wearing stockings form the hills of the background landscape. In ''Joys of Gardening'', a woman’s body merges with the front of a building, the large front Window of which is centered just below her bare breasts and, below it, the door is centered in her belly. Legless, her Belly and Groin , which appear to be made of Brick or Stone , fuse with the Ground below. In the same picture, a woman’s well-lashed buttocks give rise to the back of a corset that resembles the back of a Chair or, perhaps, a Trellis (in Leach’s sketches and paintings, one object often resembles another, adding to the complexity of his “daydreams” and multiplying the ambiguity of his symbolism, the intent being, it seems, to suggest the interconnectedness of all things, natural, technological, psychological, social, sexual, and otherwise). JOJO On his Web site, Leach discusses his Muse , the Tgirl whom he calls Jojo. He met her, he says, in a 1919 Pablo Picasso painting, ''Italian Peasants'', that he studied as he tried to learn how to draw Face s. His alter-ego as a transvestite, Jojo is a stand-in, as it were, for the women whom Leach lacks in his Life as he maintains a Bachelor ’s existence between periodic girlfriends “who through no real fault of their own have brought mostly heartache and loneliness” . Leach admits that he is partial to young women; with moist lips and bright Eyes ” . All the men in his pictures, he says, are versions or images of himself: : Sometimes I was an 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 {Link without Title} . However, he also adds that "The hope for my art is that by creating beautiful images it will not only help break down sexual barriers, I also convey something very personal for others and future generations to share" {Link without Title} . Leach says that: : Artistically I am an uninhibited erotic free Spirit that has no Sexual Preference s as I am neither man nor woman. I don’t really understand it myself but I believe the male figures I create are hermaphrodite Lesbian rather than Gay or Transsexual . But I must control my art to a degree as I leave out all the things that most disgust me like any form of real Violence or Abuse {Link without Title} . CRITICAL APPRAISAL At the Firenze Biennale Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea in 2003, art critic John T Spike said, of Leach’s 1994 drawing, ''A Taste of Honey'': : This is erotic art. Christopher Leach has great fun doing these drawings. He is stronger in the black and white than in the coloured work. He does erotic drawings a' la Beardsley. Technically fine, he provokes and challenges with these fetishes {Link without Title} . SHOWINGS Leach’s art has been shown at the Cannock Art Gallery (1978) (Amsterdam); at The Gallerie Erotique 'D'Lammerberch (1991); at Annecy (France); at The Torture Garden (London); and at Southampton and has been published in six counties in the following publications:
SEE ALSO Shemale Art EXTERNAL LINKS
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