Leslie Watts
Home: Stratford, Ontario
Title: A Study of History: Self-Portrait with my Ghosts
Media: Acrylic on cradled birch panel
Dimensions: 120 x 90 cm
Website: lesliewatts.ca
Instagram: @lesliewattsart
ARTIST STATEMENT
A Study of History: Self-Portrait with my Ghosts is a reckoning, begun as I entered my sixty-fifth year. The title comes from the pair of Arnold Toynbee books on the bottom shelf of the cabinet of curiosities behind me. My ghosts are not visible. They are symbolized by the objects on the shelves, which include the tools of my trade; my parents’ marriage portrait turned on its head; anatomical specimens taken during my cancer surgeries; a lung scan; volumes of The Book of Knowledge that fascinated me as a child; my first doll; photos of my grandparents’ cottage; an ancestor’s land petition from 1834; and my children’s self-portraits. But this is not a comprehensive collection. There is also a box on the top shelf marked PLEASE KEEP LID CLOSED. The painting represents the grief, guilt, and self-consciousness of being human. It is painted in reverse, a reflection in two senses: a consideration of my life and the obsessions that haunt me, and a physical representation of what I see in the mirror.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Leslie Watts was born in Canada in 1961. She began painting full time in 2007 after spending nearly two decades as a writer and children’s book illustrator. Since then she has exhibited annually at Village Studios in Stratford, Ontario, and her portraits have been selected for the BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK (2013/14/15); the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition at Mall Galleries, London, UK (2017 and 2019); and The Kingston Prize, in which she won Honourable Mention in 2015 and 2019 and People’s Choice in 2017. Portrait commissions include The Honourable Chrystia Freeland for Rhodes House, Oxford, UK (2018); Roy Romanow, Chancellor of the University of Saskatchewan (2019); The Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario (2021); and Shelagh Rogers, Chancellor of the University of Victoria (2022).