NEW YORK, NY.- Anna Zorina Gallery announced the Leah Yerpe solo exhibition, Internal Wilderness. This show is Yerpe’s third solo exhibition with the Gallery and features large-scale monochrome charcoal drawings alongside vibrant oil paintings.
The artist masterfully approaches realism with her media of charcoal on paper or oil on board. Through her repetition of figures within a void, she creates an otherworldly image that calls on the viewer to define on their own terms. By casting inverted colors onto the figures, she further shapes a subjective experience.
Created over the past two years, these works were inspired by the artist’s long, rigorous hikes through the Appalachian mountains outside of New York City. Over courses of 20 miles at a time, she would watch natural light shift across the exposed ancient bedrock. The rock face depicts millions of years of formation while reflecting the current blue sky amongst patches of lichen and moss. This color palette informed Yerpe’s return to painting through inspiring the incorporation of shades of azure, ochre and burnt siena.
Yerpe’s surroundings are a testament to the graceful flexibility required by nature where rigid stone carves to glacial flows and provides support to thriving life. These hikes mirror her own approach to creating. She enters as an observer, capturing her models as they move freely. Their improvised gestures set a path of cues on how to collage the static movements into formations that evince a mysterious narrative. From this unrestrained beginning, the artist strikes a balance by taking complete control of her media precisely and fastidiously representing every minute detail of the figure, capturing every pore and follicle in the skin; every stitch and wrinkle in clothing. This latest series encapsulates Yerpe’s sensations and technical breakthroughs discovered over her physically demanding journey through mountainous and creative terrain.
Leah Yerpe (b. 1986, New York) received a BFA from SUNY Fredonia and her MFA from Pratt Institute. Yerpe’s work has been exhibited extensively including presentations at the Watermill Center and Norwood Club in New York. Her drawings have been reviewed in Huffington Post, Quiet Lunch Magazine, Nylon, among others and featured on the cover of the New York Magazine. Her work is included in renowned international collections including the permanent collection of the Dowd Gallery at SUNY Cortland.
