Portrait of Leslie Dubois Adkins. Photo by Molly Haas @molly_haas
Painting Hive Mind 38” x 38” Acrylic on canvas, 2024. Photo courtesy of Leslie Adkins
Quick Little Week With Doves 36” x 36” Acrylic on canvas, 2024. Photo courtesy of Leslie Adkins
I first stood before one of Leslie Dubois Adkins’ paintings from her series “Folklore” at an exhibition last year at local shop Artemis. It was part of their exhibit “Rêve d’Été.” Most of us, giddy on the high of a balmy night (live music, frog choir), spilled out into the parking lot and chatted. I wish I would have had more time with Leslie and her works. How it took a year to reconnect is a modern social condition. This is precisely why I am so enthused about Leslie’s upcoming solo show in Los Angeles, “Folk & Future: Portraits Beyond Time.”
Leslie received a Bachelor’s Degree in Art and Design from Columbia College, in Chicago. She has exhibited at The Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago, IL, LA Art Show in Los Angeles, CA, The Modbo Gallery in Colorado Springs, CO, and Viridian Gallery in New York, NY. Her surrealist black portraiture is imbued with spiritual symbolism and animal medicine.
At Cafe Mimosa in Topanga, in the company of owner Claire Denis and other beloved artists in the canyon, I ask Leslie about the central thematic issues in her paintings, motivated by the Black American experience, her subjects are incandescent in blue, sometimes with red and white clothing.
“There is an element of timelessness to this new work. Fashions from different times in the portraits. subliminally placed colors,” she told me. In my paintings, such as ‘Hive Mind,’ I want to provoke healing through nature, reconnection, reconciliation, and self liberation.”
“In the 1940s, there were more than a million Black farmers in America, and now there are less than 50,000,” she said.
“Self reliance and connection with nature for Black Americans, because of socioeconomic status, has really been severed,” Leslie explained. “And so a lot of times, nature themes in my work are just a nod to that. Our roots are about connection to the earth, being self-sufficient, self-sustaining.”
Leslie is from Champagne, Illinois. She and I were both children in biracial families. We both find that in our experiences, within a certain radius of a university, mixed families and biracial kids were not much out of the ordinary.
“As I’ve gotten older, I realized how everywhere else is so segregated,” Leslie said. “It was good for me to be exposed to all of that, and to grow up thinking that being in a diverse community was normal.”
Leslie Adkins’ exhibition in Silver Lake is an invitation to travel into town and make an evening out of it, and if that doesn’t align, visit her studio in Topanga during the Open Studios Tour. Better yet, do both things—because few experiences are as delicious as an invitation to an artist’s studio and home after seeing their work at an exhibition.
Gallery Exhibition – The 3100 Block Gallery 3110 W Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026 https://www.leslieadkinsart.com Instagram @leslieadkins_art
