Leslie Laskey’s works can be journeys of exploration for familiars, who enjoy traveling in landscapes of discovered relationships. But however familiar these works may become over time, freshness is revealed as one breathes, as the work stimulates and returns our awareness, like a piece of music one never tires listening to. Their tuned and harmonious complexity ensures that these pieces are never merely decorative. Nothing in them is overblown or done merely for effect. Their freedom and honesty ground them for blossoming wherever they are. Laskey’s media of choice is ever changing, and characteristic of his work. In this new oeuvre, he incorporates collage, oil paint, acrylic, and crayon. It is this variety of media and style, which adds to the engaging quality of his work and its subsequent effect on viewers.

Leslie Laskey (1921-2021) served in a combat unit in Europe and was among the troops that landed on Omaha Beach, early on D-Day, 1944. He studied at Indiana University and at the Institute of Design in Chicago (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) with founder and American Bauhaus pioneer Lászlò Moholy-Nagy. Currently, he divides his time between St. Louis and Manistee, Michigan and is a Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.