With a keen awareness of painting's material transformation, artist Leslie Martinez joins the podcast to speak about their work. Leslie was born in The Rio Grande Valley of the South Texas-Mexican border and raised in Dallas, Texas. They received an MFA from Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut in 2018 and a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City in 2008. Their work in material abstraction explores notions of self-determination, embodiment, and futurity through the language and processes of transformation and discovery. Leslie Martinez is represented by And Now in Dallas, Texas where they currently live and work. After spending over a decade on the east coast, Leslie talks about their return back to their hometown of Dallas, Texas and “starting over” their entire practice. This homecoming provided Leslie a deeper understanding of self-determination: how do you rely on vision through limitation? We also talk about Dallas' art community and their decision not to move to a bigger art hub like Los Angeles and New York. We discuss their vital need for bewilderment in the studio, the inherently queer aspects of abstraction, and the importance of artistic resourcefulness ala Dolly Parton.

http://www.leslie-martinez.com

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