10 Wildwood Acres
Newfane, VT 05345
802.365.7016
leobob20@svcable.net
leonart273@svcable.net
www.leonardragouzeos.com

STATEMENT

Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing but I have faith in the process. You engage this process with risk, bravado, doubt and hope.

For me, a painting or drawing is the result of a series of assertive acts followed by discoveries, errors and corrections. This pattern of action continues for a while causing both frustration and delight, and ends when there is nothing more to add or take away. The final success and strength of an image reside primarily in its formal structure and how things are put together. Making a picture look like something is not too difficult, but making a picture feel like something is more challenging and a truer measure of its worth.

For most of my career I’ve chosen to work in a reductive abstract mode, avoiding representational or “realist” imagery. Sometimes, however, the purely abstract format is not a suitable means of expression or communication. For the past few years I have been working in a more illusionist, representational manner and have refrained from employing color because color has specificity and it’s own language. Black, on the other hand, allows for an abstracted, metaphoric level of understanding and interpretation and suggests documentation or an unadorned truth. My preferred media include gouache (opaque watercolors), encaustic (oils, pigment and wax), charcoal and ink.

BIO

I was born and raised in NYC and educated in its public schools and colleges. I left in 1974 with an MFA in painting and six years of graphic design employment behind me. My wife Bobbe and I moved to the midwest where I took a teaching position at Iowa State University. Living on the plains taught me to see space and the void as vital elements, equal in effect and importance to the forms and objects engaged within that space. I also learned to garden and understand landscape and the integration and interdependency of all life forms. In 1980 we moved once more and I began teaching at Millersville University of Pennsylvania where I remained until retiring in the summer of 2005, and settled here in Newfane, VT. Our two children have grown and moved on. Throughout my teaching career I maintained an active studio, continuing to paint and exhibit. My hope is that here in our newly adopted environment I can concentrate more on my artwork as well as spend time enjoying the simple beauties and pleasures of life in New England.

Big Garlic #2, Ink on synthetic.paper, 38”h. x 50”w.

Skull #1, Ink on synthetic.paper, 38”h. x 50”w.

Airplane, Ink on synthetic.paper, 38”h. x 75”w.

Portrait, Ink on synthetic.paper, 50”w. x 38”h.

Spider, Encaustic (oils and wax,) 20” x 20”

Shelter Gingko, Encaustic (oils and wax,) 20” x 20”