D E C E P T I O N
2011, collage and mixed media on paper, 30" x 22".
Curator Tracy Wheeler describes this body of work deftly in her catalog essay for Leigh's exhibition “Deception” at Ampersand International Arts.
“By incising, excising, resizing and then adding the tension of a highly sophisticated hand and eye, Wells has developed a visual vocabulary that serves her particularly well...
For Wells, the question – "what can you know and what can you not know?" remains the same, but with “Deception” (her) quest is … the profound distance that a mind can drive between itself and the body tasked with housing it, and the sometimes terrible acts of corporeal obsession the body will demand as an attempt to reunite the two.
Wells’ large works on paper immediately force the viewer to question the difference between flesh and stone, agency and confinement; evoking a struggle… probing the performative aspects of obsession.
The power of Wells’ latest work is that even as she attempts to evoke darkness the art itself presents an alternative. By staying true to her highly personal and particular aesthetic, she offers hope that however incomplete, some degree of reconciliation between the known and the unknown is indeed possible."
