Misti Leitz Shropshire, United Kingdom
Sculptor in Timber and Stone.
Working mainly in timber and stone, and often recycling found or discarded materials, Misti makes abstract works that comment on her own situation and environment, and express her thoughts and feelings about them. In direct contrast to her training as a designer, where every last detail of a commissioned piece needs to be rigorously planned from the outset, she will often start a sculpture with no drawing or particular direction, allowing the material itself to guide her until it reaches a point where she can start to consciously refine the form that has begun to appear, and to give it meaning.
Her primary focus is in imbuing her work with a sense of energy and character, further refining the visual language she unwittingly began to develop in 2003, and using flowing organic forms to give a sense of vitality to her work. The pieces she makes usually feature combinations of contrasting materials, and the amount of time she spends smoothing and finishing each one results in sculptures that are informed as much by touch as they are by design, giving them a sensual tactility.
Misti’s innate feeling for form and volume comes from working with period architectural masterpieces of figurative carving whose inspiration is largely the natural world, and yet much of her own inspiration comes from a more transient source. For her, it is the shapes seen in flames, in flowing water, and at the edges of our peripheral vision; shapes seen in clouds and wisps of smoke; shapes seen in dreams or on the insides of our eyelids when we’re tired. It is the capturing of these ephemeral forms that fascinates Misti – solidifying the ethereal, while at the same time attempting to convey the essence of their movement and fluidity.
