About

Bio

Jean LeCluyse was born and raised in the heart of the Great Plains in Kansas. The tall grass prairies and majestic Flint Hills of her native state became the foundational inspiration for her art. Jean earned a BFA in printmaking from the University of Kansas. During the course of her journey as an artist, she worked as a farm laborer detasseling corn and as a cannery worker putting the pork in the pork and beans. Pursuing an interest in printmaking, Jean apprenticed at a lithography workshop and later honed her drawing skills during many years as a freelance scientific illustrator. She eventually became a registered nurse, which resulted in many rewarding and inspirational experiences that continue to influence her artwork today.

Artist Statement

Drawing is my primary practice. I am inspired by nature, family and social justice issues. The more detail I put into a drawing the more satisfying it is. A painter friend once said of the detail in my work “She takes it beyond what is reasonable. That’s where the magic is”.

My process takes advantage of the interaction between intuition and intention. My drawings are representational but I depend on the interaction between the randomly prepared surface and the representational drawing to offer something more that I can amplify and incorporate into the drawing. Something that I could not have thought of without seeing it emerge from the drawing, Something, if i’m lucky, I catch before it disappears. It can be a literal interaction, like when a random shape in the background becomes a part of the primary image or it can be a psychological interaction as when a color expresses an emotion. I draw because I believe it “teaches us to pay attention to the small quiet moments, the daily decisions, the seemingly insignificant gestures that make us human.” Drawing allows me access to the serendipitous coincidences or the synchronicity we miss in the hustle-bustle construct that is too often mistaken for reality.                                                

—Jean LeCluyse

Recent accomplishments

Exhibited in Resolutions 2020: 6th Annual Juried Show at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough, North Carolina, January 6-25, 2020. Juror Katie Zigler, Director of the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, awarded the 2D Distinction Prize to Jean’s drawing, Three Crows.

Exhibited in Drawing Discourse: 7th Annual Contemporary Exhibition. Juror, Edgar Jerins, selected 43 pieces from among 908 entries submitted by 307 artists from 7 countries. Jean’s graphite drawing, Underdevelopment at Obey Creek, was among the drawings selected for presentation in the exhibit in the S. Tucker Cooke Gallery, Owen Hall, UNC Asheville. January 15, 2016 − February 12. Her work is published in the exhibition.

Exhibited in Drawn, Manifest Gallery, in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Drawings by 394 artists (1188 pieces) from 44 states, 20 countries, and Washington, D.C., were submitted for consideration. Jean’s graphite drawing, Hierophany, was one of thirty-six works by 27 artists from 13 states, England, Japan, and Spain selected for presentation in the gallery April 17 − May 15, 2015, and is the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.

MY LOGO

A well-designed logo conveys multiple complex meanings in a simple image. If it is successful it is also a link to the subconscious. It is an attempt to distill a complex idea into the simplest design. Think of the cross or the swastika and the powerful passions they evoke.

I designed a mark that is a symbol of important elements of my experience as an artist from Kansas whose prairie landscape was the original inspiration for my work.

My logo is taken from a quilt pattern known as ‘Prairie Queen’. Quilts are the artistic and practical genius of women. They are beautiful useful things made of scraps and rags. The horizontal lines represent the low hills that parallel the seemingly infinite horizon in the Great Plains. The vertical lines represent the grasses and their deep roots into the ancient, fertile, prairie earth. The four corners represent; water, fire, air and sun.

Titan symbol,
economy of line is
women’s work, the culture,
the pride of knowing I am one of them,
prairie consciousness, deep roots, nurturing that has no end,
fierce and renewed by fire at the center of a great land,
the heart.