The drive to create
This story was featured in the September 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art September 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
Leslie Dyas, Profusion, oil, 13 x 11.
LESLIE DYAS can’t remember a time when she wasn’t “cooking up ideas” about things she wanted to express through art. “I recently found my first sketchbook, and there was a lot going on in that little head,” she chuckles. In one especially imaginative drawing she created around age 6, the young artist portrayed her parents and five siblings riding inside the family station wagon. Dyas, however, wasn’t inside. Instead, she depicted herself being towed behind the wagon on a comfy canopy bed.
Propelled forward by her unending creative energy, the Louisville, KY, native learned to paint with oils as a teenager. Later she attended the University of Cincinnati’s prestigious College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning before going on to work as an art director and illustrator. After meeting her husband, Dyas began designing products for his busy crystal-trophy business; on the side, however, she always made time to paint.
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- Leslie Dyas, Day at the Beach, oil, 18 x 24.
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- Leslie Dyas, April Iris, oil, 16 x 10.
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- Leslie Dyas, Perfect Drive, oil, 14 x 11.
Today, from her northern Kentucky studio, the artist portrays everything from floral still lifes to figurative scenes, and the tools she employs—ranging from brushes to willow sticks—are equally broad. Dyas describes herself as a swift painter who is heavily influenced by the Impressionists and classical themes in the vein of Sargent, Sorolla, and Fechin. But, she adds, “My inspiration is almost never the subject matter, the colors, or the light, so much as the texture of the paint and what I’m applying it with. It’s the stepping-off point to what I’m going to paint that day. I might wake up and have this feeling of a thick brush and a very fluid, transparent paint, or a palette knife and thick paint.”
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- Leslie Dyas, Patriotic Duty, oil, 16 x 12.
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- Leslie Dyas, Rose Gold, oil, 14 x 11.
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- Leslie Dyas, The Paddock, oil, 16 x 16.
As her husband nears retirement, and with Dyas transitioning to painting full time, the couple has been spending part of the year in the low country near Hilton Head Island, SC, where the artist has a second studio. Often, she heads to the beach to sketch and make color notes. “What I’ve come to love about the beach is the democracy of it,” she muses. “There are all walks of life there, and people are baring their bodies and not self-conscious. That’s what I try to pick up in my beach art is that natural communion of the light and the air. We are all there for the same reason: because it feels great to be on the beach.” —Kim Agricola
representation
The District Gallery, Knoxville, TN; www.lesliedyas.com.
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- Leslie Dyas, Three Graces, oil, 12 x 18.
This story was featured in the September 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art September 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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