Catherine Roberts Leach

My eyes see the world formed by shape, color, line and contrasts. The details of reality are nearly beside the point, only that they contribute to the entire. I see forms dominating my environment as one might experience the blur from unfocused eyes. An anecdote may explain it best. Recently, I was driving along a very curvy road beside a hill, and came upon a design in the road: tire tracks going off at a diagonal, toward the hillside. It wasn’t until several minutes later when, still driving along, I felt my brain catch up with my eyes and was shocked to realize the implications of the dark parallel lines angled against the center line. Reality had escaped me.

Still, my unmanipulated digital photographs capture the real. Suggesting mystery within the reality is what inspires me. Representing facts on one hand, and enigmas on the other, the forms take me where they will.

Catherine Roberts Leach was born in New York City and currently lives in California. She is a self-taught, fine art photographer focusing on above and below, mood and mystery. Her images have been exhibited at the Los Angeles International Airport, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art Rental and Sales Gallery, the Los Angeles Art Association/Gallery825, and through juried exhibitions online, and at galleries in New York, California, Texas, Oregon, Washington DC, Georgia, Connecticut, Virginia, and Missouri.

Although primarily an abstract artist, her war protest photograph, “Imagine,” appeared on the front page of ImaginePeace.com, a website of Yoko Ono’s, at Ms. Ono’s invitation in 2008. Catherine’s images have won numerous international art awards, and have been published in the juried 2009 Artist Catalog, Los Angeles Art Association, The World’s Best Black & White Photography, 2008 (Black & White Spider Awards), and Best of Photography Annual 2004, Photographer’s Forum Magazine.

Among the jurors and curators selecting her work for exhibition include artist Chris Burden, gallerist Craig Krull, and curators Scott Canty and Mark Steven Greenfield of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Sarah Bancroft of the Orange County Museum of Art, and Samuel Hoi, President of the Otis College of Art and Design.