Today we’d like to introduce you to Christopher St.Leger.
Hi Christopher, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I started out painting small watercolors at my desk and on the street largely so in Budapest. You could say that by beginning small and with watercolor (kids paint essentially), I waded into painting gently, but I did so all on my own. Never had a mentor beyond books or museums. I’d also experimented with house paint on building scrap, just to dabble in creative explosiveness. But as a whole, I looked at painting as a tradition, as a series of methods and techniques that I’d have to learn slowly. It was also my perfect way that took me off in my own direction to be independent and self-employed. All of this twenty-five or thirty years down this road still informs me. And having been at it on this somewhat focused path for so long, I am just now comfortable enough to take on other work like contracting or design work, which because of my architecture schooling, comes full circle. Painting and design and creativity is a huge lessons in juggling and balance.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
What a great second question… Naturally, the flow of paint and ideas has its own ups and downs, which I’ve always combatted with a consistent presence in the studio. But the business of connecting my work with collectors started in the nineties with slide photography and postcard invitations to art galleries. And I’ve seen it through into its current state of social media and the decline of brick and mortar art galleries that are not non-profits. There are pros and cons to both periods of time (I refer to the before and after of digital sharing). But the best feature of practicing art today is the immediacy I share with my audience. To think about how long my work used to sit in a dark closet before being hung on a gallery wall where for only one month a passerby might see it.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Developing a personal relationship with my artwork and creating my own standards of success together work to keep my experience of painting closer to what I had when I began painting in watercolor decades ago. It might seem like I stay focused on a subject or a medium for a prolonged stretch of time, but when I examine the work over the span of years and years, I see an evolution that is slower and organic. Somehow this has been the course which I attribute to my staying out of the way as much as possible. I let my paintings have a say by letting them develop how they want to.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
As a visual artist, folks might think I actually want to talk about visual art. I’d rather exchange dumb ideas about why there’s so much salt in ocean water. I find playing basketball to be a far greater way to argue and settle anything. Going to a place like Hungary and back, which I’ve done often over the past twenty-five years, and trying to understand and then explain that shift, imagining any other place and interpreting it, is a conversation I wish to have late into any evening, so long as it’s not past about 10. I love places that others find dull or uninteresting. I love to disarm people of their bullshit.
Contact Info:
- Website: ChristopherStLeger.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christopherstleger/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristopherStLegerStudio
