Jackie Leishman

Jackie Leishman worked as an Artist-in-Residence at Prairieside Outpost in Spring 2021. She is an artist based in Claremont, California.

This is the finished project. 18 diptychs. I like the story they tell together, something that is complete and honest.

The best place to start is from my sketchbooks.  

I was reading about the Tallgrass prairie, how humans have destroyed it and only 4% remains. No elk live here anymore. Bison have to be protected and reintroduced. What have we gained with so much progress? Did we lose ourselves along the way? How to show loss, but also to show it is worth saving? How do I show the beauty of this place- when I don’t really see it, but I hear it and feel it? Tomorrow we head to the preserve, to walk the ground. To look, observe and listen. I have come at the edge of abundance, transition in seasons. What will I find?

We are at the edge of winter and spring. All the small leaves are delicate, small beginning. I am not sure about the prairie, just yet. So far, I have seen a bunch of dead tall grass, but green is coming. It is quiet here. Time feels to move in a different rotation. The wind is full. I am a part of this, as one of many. I feel how disconnected I live, how disjointed my life is- it is loud and fractured and all I want is this. Without people, time to think and maybe make.

How to show wind? The way this place feels? Remote. Alive. Always in motion. But subtle. It is a place that seeps into you. A place being restored, almost lost. A place that needs destruction to be reborn. A place forgotten. How to show that?

One side of the road is green, the other golden and brown. One side had recently been burned, the other had not.

What we see above ground is not most of the plant. At least 2x the biomass is underground, so burning it does not affect the main source of the plant. The root system is amazing.

There is an abundance of color here. Blue jays, purple flowers, red cardinals, yellow dandelions, stone, blue sky, green buds, tulips, lilacs, Oklahoma redbud trees, sunrise and sunset are all blush and faded purple. Fire, smoke. It is all here amidst the neutrals of the prairie grass that is tall and brittle with green poking through the base.

We spent every day walking the prairie. We walked 5-9 miles a day. We got a sense of the place and then I worked every afternoon in the studio, trying to get a semblance of what I had just experienced.