Visual Language Magazine Contemporary Fine Art Vol 3 no 9

VL Lelija Roy
http://www.lelija.net
http://aspenspaces.com
Denver-based artist Lelija Roy offers landscapes: observed, remembered and imagined. Lelija’s current work
speaks to her intense need to be one with the natural world and to celebrate the beauty of earth’s biodiversity.
Her creative process is essentially terra-forming. Her multi-layered canvases start with earth, water and sky.
Later she grows rocks and trees and plants.
Although her inspiration starts in nature, rarely does she reproduce a specific scene. You recognize mountains,
shore lines, forests but her intend is to place you in this space. So what you see is less important
than how you feel. She wants you to feel surrounded and embraced by these organic forms. Hence, her
mixed-media paintings are about the “space” created by the trees in a grove, the wind and water carved
shape of a canyon, the quiet intersection of woodland and meadow or the ever-changing line between wet
and dry sand on a beach.
As an only child, my best friends were a box of crayons. My spirit poured on to countless pieces of paper.
Her formal art trained began in the 1970s at the Art Students League in New York City and a BFA from the
University of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her early career in graphic design morphed into publishing, educational
research and teaching; avoidably completing the circle as a full-time artist since 2005. Her work is held in
both public and private collections throughout the U.S. and in several foreign countries. Lelija’s artwork can
be found in galleries in Sedona, AZ as well as Denver, Breckenridge and Vail, CO.
Break Free 18x24
Primal Woodlands-12x18 diptych
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