STATEMENT

My current work is entangled in landscape, memory, perception, and our subjective experiences with space, time, and reality. The imagery reveals scenes that are imagined, remembered, and composites of observations, memories, and emotions. The act of creating from memory forces an emphasis on the process of remembering and of deciphering what has been retained, what has been omitted, and what may have slipped past initial perception. These works explore the ways in which our experiences with physical places, internal spaces, and time are affected by external forces, emotional states, and how these moments are stored, recalled, and reexperienced through memory. The processes that shape our physical reality mirror the organizing forces of our internal realm.

In addition to image-making, I enjoy observing the forces that craft our physical environment, weather cycles, geologic time, growth patterns, and entropy. I am fascinated with the imperceptible forces that form our universe, gravity, energy waves, particles, and chaos. I am intrigued by theories of multiple dimensions, past lives, and extra perceptual abilities.

These ideas, fascinations, and areas of interest are revealed through works on paper and tethered to printmaking techniques. Printmaking seems appropriate for exploring memory as it requires a succession of processes and cycles. The processes: tearing paper, carving blocks, engraving lines, wiping plates, rolling ink, allows for time to think. Image-making is frequently indirect and a result of managing a universe of variables. The acts involved in printmaking relate to memory, inscribing, impressing, repeating. Paper is delicate and ephemeral. Images degrade over time. Each impression is unique.


BIO

Karl LeClair currently lives and works in Hillsboro, Oregon. While overseeing the Public Art and Gallery Programs for the City of Hillsboro, he maintains an active studio practice and primarily creates works on paper, grounded in printmaking techniques. Having grown up in New Hampshire, LeClair moved West, attended Boise State University, and received a BFA in Art Education with emphases in Printmaking and Art History in 2013. His work has been selected in juried exhibits at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT and through the Communities West printmaking portfolio as well as featured in two Idaho Triennial exhibits at the Boise Art Museum in 2013 and 2020.