Leah MacDonald

Leah Macdonald makes her portraits into artifacts, one-of-a-kind conceptions that suggest the imperfection and multiplicity of memory. The heart of her mixed media work, a poignant sense of revisitation and return. Her passion is sharing her art and creativity with others through teaching workshops, art exhibitions and her prolific internet portfolios. Her new technique “photogestic” is the fruition of all her years of experimenting with altered surface analog photography and mixing media. It combines her three skills in art: photography, collage and encaustic painting. When transforming photographs from slivers of reality to complete fantasy, she expresses the tales of womanhood. She uses collage to place her figures in new and surreal environments. Her intuition with encaustics allows beeswax to embellish and veil her models. She carefully draws on the wax to decorate and control the visibility of the subject. Layering these mediums by manipulating surface texture and color grants her the ability to express her imagination and bring her art vision to life.

She was born in Philadelphia, she attended college in San Francisco and then went on to receive her MFA in Photography from the California College of Art. She enjoyed a long and varied career path within the arts:commercial photography, professional analog printer and college professor. She was the Education Curriculum Director at the Manayunk-Roxborough Art Center. In 2007 she was asked to do a live encaustic painting demonstration on the Martha Stewart show. Other highlights include a solo retrospective of encaustic nudes at Wexler gallery in 2010. In 2016 she was the scenic director of In My Body Musical. In 2017 she was selected as the recipient of the NewCourtland Fellowship by The Center for Emerging Visual Artists. In 2018 she was an artist in residence at the Encaustic Castle. She recently launched a new website; Lost Light Luv, it features her legacy analog photography. Her encaustic photography art is represented by Inliquid Arts, Saatchi Art, GalerieBMG and Cerulean Art Gallery in Philadelphia. She has also self published numerous handmade artist books.

Website: Leah-Macdonald.com

Instagram: @Leahwax1

Classes with Leah MacDonald

Photogestic - Reality to Fantasy including preparation techniques

We will create a unique portrait combining a digital photograph of a person or animal in black and white extract the photo out of its original setting and then combine it with another location photograph. This simple assemblage suggests a new narrative and setting for the chosen subject. We will use found ephemera, images of flowers or other embellishments to step out of normal life and into fantasy. We will explore multiple collage techniques, including whiting out, dodging and burning with sandpaper and burning paper and panels to create interesting alchemistic textures. Then we will embellish the photo collage with a layer of wax medium after this base coat we will then add more layers with encaustic paints, stencils, scraping of layers and then some hand painting with pigment sticks and or pan pastels. The end result is a complete transformation of black and white photographs into colorful fantasy worlds.

Finishing Touches

Painting photo / encaustic collage with pigment sticks