Leslie Allen has painted for over 30 years in Sausalito's Industrial Center Building (ICB) in the historic Marinship district on the waterfront. The ICB is a cultural hub in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Allen is a founding member of the ICB Artists Association of 100+ artists. Her top floor studio has a 35' open ceiling with exposed redwood bones of the WWII-era structure. Allen derives inspiration from the studio's depth and geometry, and often inserts references into her paintings as an homage to those workers who created what has long been her sanctuary.
Leslie Allen studied graphic design in San Diego and was a watercolorist before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she shifted gears to fine art and ultimately expressive abstract oil painting. Allen studied at the College of Marin before and after attending the Academy of Art, and studied privately with several Bay Area artists. Allen also studied aquatint etching at Crown Point Press, but uses her intaglio press mostly for making monotypes that relate to her paintings. She regards Mark Adams and Chester Arnold as her most significant mentors, and Richard Diebenkorn and Joan Mitchell as her greatest inspirations in abstract painting.
Allen is also an amateur cellist and plays in the College of Marin Symphony Orchestra. She regards her love of music as integral to her life as an artist, and she hopes to explore expressive abstraction on cello in some form that rhymes with her progression as a painter.
Allen has worked out her own visual language through years of experimentation, exploration and teaching, and her sophisticated paintings reveal a keen sense of color, gesture and division of space. ~ Donna Seager, Gallerist
Leslie Allen is represented by Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA, and Kennedy Contemporary, Newport Beach, CA.
Archival prints of many of her works are published by Art Brokers Inc., San Rafael, CA.
