the paintings of LUC LEESTEMAKER
(1957-2012)
PETER FRANK - ART CRITIC
Born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, in 1957, Leestemaker was largely self-taught as an artist but took inspiration and guidance from his grandfather, a painter in the Dutch court. In his native land, Leestemaker was an organizer and entrepreneur in several arts, including visual art, theater, and literature. Working in Amsterdam, he helped found a performing arts center, an art collective, and a monthly magazine devoted to business and the arts. He was managing director of Leestemaker & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in arts marketing, financing, and public relations that at its height boasted the Dutch government’s cultural portfolio as its most prominent client.In the1990s, Leestemaker moved to Los Angeles, he painted with heavy strokes, and in mostly, black and white. After spending a year in New York, Luc started to paint with more color and developed a style influenced by Abstract Expressionism in both its American and European forms. He took particular inspiration from the examples of Willem De Kooning and Karel Appel, other Dutchmen active in America. Leestemaker quickly evolved a more lyrical style, in which the expansive brushstrokes and vivid palette of Abstract Expressionism becalm themselves, ultimately taking on the composition and atmosphere of land- and seascapes.Vigorous, and yet, imbued with art-historical reference, his paintings now had a distinctive and evocative style. His experience in marketing and public outreach had convinced Leestemaker that artists have a public role to play even beyond the presence and impact of their work. He advocated this public role to artists and non-artists alike, lecturing and giving workshops on the creative process, theartist’s identity, and the symbiosis between artist and society. To this end, Leestemaker published a memoir-like book, The Intentional Artist: Stories From My Life, in 2010.
Several other books and catalogues, including the monograph Luc Leestemaker: Paintings (2004), have documented Leestemaker’s oeuvre, as has the widely-screened film Swimming Through The Clouds: A Portrait of the Artist (2008), directed by Terence Gross and Ruy Carpenter. In 2006, the award-winning Canadian composer Vincent Ho used four paintings of the artist as inspiration for a chamber music work in four parts, titled “Four Paintings By Leestemaker.” Funded by the Canadian Arts Council this work was performed at a number of music festivals throughout China and Canada. In March 2012, Leestemaker was selected as a Star of Design 2012 in the art category by the Pacific Design Center.
Leestemaker’s work continues to be exhibited widely throughout North America and Europe, in museums, galleries, and various public spaces.
MALISSA SAGHATCHI, ART DEALER
Though they look landscape-inspired, Leestemaker’s paintings are ethereal and at times give you an aerial view through the clouds making you feel larger than yourself. He creates a space that feels familiar and esthetically pleasing. When Luc introduced the terracotta colored primer; he created a depth to his paintings that set him apart.
GINA FRAONE, ART DEALER
As an art consultant and gallery director, I had the privilege of enjoying a close working ` relationship of several years with Luc Leestemaker. When I first became familiar with Luc’s painting in 2002, I saw his naturally expressive, bold and rhythmic compositions, often on very large canvases, and thought he might have easily been a part of the vanguard painters of the 1940s dubbed the Abstract Expressionists. Because of Luc’s willingness, however, to totally surrender to a painting process that frequently ushered in surprises, he managed to create his own unique visual language that connected his work with an entirely new generation of art lovers. Over the next decade, he was constantly pushing his paintings toward new and different directions that vividly communicated to viewers his personal journey in the world of his own time.
Luc did of course feel a kinship with the AbEx era painters whom he deeply admired. The same year I started working with him, Luc was offered, at the age of 45, a retrospective at the Bakersfield Museum of Art. At that point in time, he had become highly sought after by art collectors for his distinctive style of atmospheric landscapes
In an essay accompanying the exhibition, Leestemaker wrote:
The current landscapes take me a few hundred years back, and may well be connected to [my] great, great grandfather who painted quite haunting and broody landscapes for King Willem I [of Holland]. But for me they are anchored in the much more recent language of the Abstract Expressionists who, in my opinion, spoke the first raw and optimistic language that made American art its own. And that is to me exactly the most exciting thing about painting: Letting the paint brush wander, and follow, rather than trying to dictate it. For me painting is not an intellectual process, but rather an ancient intuitive one. And although once every so often someone in an ivory tower decides that, “painting is dead,” I am very happy to report that for me it has never been more alive.