Born in Winnipeg, Leathers graduated from Sheridan College’s School of Crafts & Design, and received his BFA from NSCAD with a major in Jewellery and a minor in Art History. He went on to receive his MFA in Sculpture from the University of Calgary. The recipient of numerous awards, scholarships and grants, Paul’s work has been exhibited and collected internationally. He has taught at various institutions, served on Boards of Directors, and in 2006, was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He is currently a full-time artist who has lived and worked in Red Deer, AB since 2000.
Artist Statement
My work explores strategies of display and attraction wherein I invent evocative forms that use materiality and light to entice and locate the viewer. Conceptual plans are generated out of the investigation and application of non-Albertian visual systems that explore the objective relationship between viewer, viewed and viewpoint. Interested in Mario Perniola’s description of a poetics of the enigma and of strategic beauty,[1] my artworks both reveal and subvert the primacy of the gaze while engaging the viewer as an active participant: the lure of the object. Recent pieces have incorporated coloured porcelain forms made while at residencies in China.
[1] Mario Perniola, Enigmas: the Egyptian Moment in Society and Art, trans. Christopher Woddall (London: Verso, 1995), p. 117.
image credit: paul leathers
