A Life in Pictures
This attempt to trace my development as an artist isn't in any sense a catalogue of the pictures I've produced nor is it an autobiography as such, although there is a chronology that clearly relates to the phases of my 'outward' life. For me art has always been about an alternative world, one which relates to what others call the 'real' world but which has an existence of its own, a preferable one in many ways. And yet I'm aware of the need to communicate, to use the language of the visual to encapsulate, reinforce or even surpass what can be said in words.
As solid representations of things imagined images have a power that some religious people see as devilish, although for me they are a way in which the mind can engage in a dialogue with itself. If I speak of the people who inhabit my paintings as my 'children' this makes clear the love that defines my relationship with them, that has brought them into existence. No man or woman can call himself an artist who does not love his creations. Like real children they are his best claim to immortality.
Bill Leedham
June 2010
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