About Me
My name is Lillian Leche, and I am working towards receiving a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) at Washington State University. I am from the Kitsap Peninsula and despite a five-year period of living in Holland MI as a child, I was born and raised in Washington.
I make both 2D and 3D work that honors the importance of community between people. By creating predominantly elderly characters, I can explore the concept of community in dying. I spent the formative parts of my youth visiting loved ones in care facilities and hospitals. Growing up around these spaces, I have spent a lot of time contemplating what it is to have lived a full life to then be humbled by age or ailment. During a time of life where they are fully dependent on others, it is important to me to create work that seeks out their individuality amidst that dependency. This acts to create commonality and unity between generations.
Artist Statement
The Home
“The Home” is a body of work that explores what it is to go somewhere to die, specifically a nursing home or hospital. It is a collection of both oil paintings and ceramic sculptures where elderly people predominate the subject matter. The individuals presented are connected through the idea of a care facility, rather than a physically depicted one. This separation defines them by their humanity instead of by their dependency on an institution.
Creating with clay is an act both physical and painterly. Clay’s physicality inspired the expressive brush strokes seen in my paintings. By purposefully pairing the two mediums they come together as one. Each share similar principles. This unity represents how I want the viewer to place themselves into the presented narrative of a “Home” being something entered, yet not left. It is through this insertion of self that a greater community of connectivity and empathy is formed.
These characters are not modeled after specific individuals. Their identities are fabricated, allowing each character to act as a familiar stranger for the viewer to create their own narrative for.
The outlying landscape painting represents the act of final rest. It is a moment of tranquility amidst the fluctuating emotion throughout the figural pieces. I work with this subject of dying to find moments of comfort amidst grief. Gratitude for the joy of living is where I find that comfort.
The goal of “The Home” is to have a conversation on dying that honors the gravity of loss while still creating a healthy levity through the joys and challenges of interpersonal connection. It is a celebration of life and an act of humanizing the final state of the human condition.