American Artist

Grew Up in Wyoming.
Made It to LA.
Started playing the game and still in it

 

Over twenty-five years in the game. The work is different but it’s the same basic vibe. Cinematic, and rooted in the American West. I don’t know what else to say about it. How does anybody survive out here? The long way around was the only way.

  • The Beginning The Long Way Around Gabe Leonard grew up in an oil field camp in Wyoming. Raised by an...

    The Beginning

    The Long Way Around

     

    Gabe Leonard grew up in an oil field camp in Wyoming. Raised by an old prospector and a mountain lion.

    He found the start to his art career on the boardwalk in Venice Beach, CA, in 1999. Selling copies of his portfolio to tourists until he could find a real job. That job never came.

    With no plan B, Gabe took his show to other streets and venues, then other cities and states, then internationally.

    The last 10 years have been met with a world that has moved on in an industry still relying on landlines. The pay more, get less nature of the current landscape is a comedy on the cusp of tragedy. In a pre-apocalyptic landscape, good people with bad choices prove the West never left… Welcome to Town.

    “Paying your dues is the only job you’ll never lose.”

  • The Work

    Welcome to Town

     

    For most of his career, Gabe’s paintings focused on the figures. The body language and movement are key. The backgrounds abstracted; the mind fills in the rest. The landscape was always implied and the characters weren’t posing for paintings.

    Going back to Wyoming, to the sandstone rocks and relentless wind above the ghost town he first lived, it occurred to him that he wasn’t just visiting. The formative experience of the environment was core to his point of view. This landscape has been the lens through which all the work is filtered. The environment is fundamental to the characters in it.

    Where you came from led to where we are. The stage and the roles we play go together. We’re standing on common ground.

  • The Philosophy

    The Foundation Under the Vision

     

    Awareness doesn’t release you from participation. Becoming lucid, then getting lost in the dream again. Insight is temporary. Seeing your conditioning doesn’t automatically free you from it.

    You must choose, you have no choice.

    Meaning depends on someone experiencing it. “Important to who?” challenges claims that something matters universally. Find purpose in making, experiencing, and continuing to play.

    People’s incentives deserve more scrutiny than their explanations. Who benefits, who bears the consequences, and do professed principles survive a threat to someone’s interests? Be especially skeptical of people asking for collective restraint while protecting their own advantage.

    Integrity is something you practice under pressure. Do good work, show up, be easy to work with, don’t be a pushover. Responsibility with boundaries. Doing the right thing can cost you, and good judgment doesn’t guarantee a good outcome.

    Authenticity requires accepting the possibility of failure. Make work on your own terms rather than guesses about what sells. Ownership of your choices matters more than if they worked.

    Human experience exceeds our explanations of it. If I could say it with words I wouldn’t make the paintings. Explanation closes more doors than it opens.

    Power, luck, and change keep everyone’s position unstable. We live in worlds where confidence and control can unravel. The West serves as a philosophical lens: good people making bad choices in conditions that are out of control.

    Spare us the details.