Blog Archives

End of Summer | My Work at ABQ Museum + SCAPE in California

Marietta Leis | August 26, 2025 - 10:14 am

ABQ Museum’s exhibition Abstracting Nature has been in the works for a couple of years now, with Josie Lopez curating. The included artists are myself, Agnes Martin, Karen Yank, Judy Tuwalestiwa, Yoshiko Shimano, Joan Weissman, Joanna Keane Lopez, Emmi Whitehorse & Lydia Madrid.

Abstracting Nature foregrounds the works of ten local artists, past and contemporary, whose individual bodies of work share a kindred and enduring relationship with the New Mexico landscape. Each of these artists has nurtured a unique and long-standing relationship with a specific material, and has deeply explored how that material informs their interactions with the natural world.
My included works are a representative exploration of a myriad of landscapes both physical and internal through reductive abstraction and elemental meditation. My blue Breathless paintings and Air photographs on metal panels (above) present water and air as mediums of calm. The Vacuities prints and Infernos sculptures (below) inspired by my time in Iceland, utilize stark contrast, deep blacks and primordial forms to present time as a landscape in itself.
On Saturday September 27th I will be part of the ABQ Museum’s public panel talk as a bookend for the exhibition. The closing conversation, moderated by Asst. Curator William T. Gassaway, will include artists Emmi Whitehorse, Yoshiko Shimano and myself. We will discuss how our art uses abstraction to share deep stories and personal connections with the environment. Please join us. Details below:
Abstracting Nature
ABQ Museum 2000 Mountain Rd NW, Albuquerque, NM
Closing Panel: Saturday. Sept 27, 2 pm: A conversation with Emmi Whitehorse, Yoshiko Shimano , and Marietta Leis, moderated by William T. Gassaway, Asst. Curator of Art

I’m also thrilled to share that my gallery representation in California: SCAPE: Southern California Art Projects + Exhibitions, will be opening an exhibition of my work, WATER + LIGHT. The solo show will highlight a diverse group of my works that explore how reflection, shadow flow, and form have inspired and shaped my practice. Some of my earlier included works like Crosscurrents (woodblock prints, above) and Fluidic Focus (watercolors, below) present my time making work at the water’s edge from Greece and the Azores.

Many of my more recent works like Striving 2, a sculptural painting of polished graphite on folded Tyvek, (below), and my Eclipse series of paintings utilizing black Flashe and copper leaf (below) are mixed media experiments in light, shadow and reflectivity.
My studio assistant Stefan Jennings Batista and SCAPE director Jeannie Denholm have curated the exhibition which opens Saturday September 20th at SCAPE in the Corona Del Mar area of Newport Beach CA.

Blog Archives

Blues in the Air

Marietta Leis | April 25, 2025 - 3:40 pm

BLUE is a healing, calm color. Resonating the seas and skies of our natural world where we find peace. No wonder my blue paintings have popped up frequently in the last months. First the new UNM Nursing Building installed “Indigo”then @pieprojects.santafe curated “Out of the Blue” paintings in their December exhibition,
@michaelwarrencontemporary followed with “Molten Reflection” in their January “Vignettes” exhibit, soon

followed by @scapegallery exhibiting a 24” blue in their “Stillness Within” exhibit and Michael Warren Contemporary is now showing a 24” blue in their Design Room exhibition. We obviously are all craving the soothing blue in our lives now.

I’m painting the blue voids of our cosmos in the studio connecting to our wholeness. .
Your thoughts……

Blog Archives

2025 New Year News

Marietta Leis | February 11, 2025 - 2:57 pm

Solo show: Internal Reflections at MWC, Denver
In September my solo exhibition, Internal Reflections opened at the beautiful Michael Warren Contemporary art gallery in Denver: www.michaelwarrencontemporary.com. My husband, David, and I flew there for the reception and my poetry reading and artist talk that I did the following day. It was so rewarding to see my art in this beautiful space because we had canceled the exhibition because of Covid for a couple of years and then when we rescheduled the gallery had a flood and had to close thus the opening finally in 2024. I showed different bodies of work that I did during the above period.

After the meeting and greeting and celebrations in Denver we headed out to Green Mountain Falls for a long awaited visit to James Turell’s Skyspace interactive exhibit commissioned by Green Box, (https://greenboxarts.org/skyspace/) an organization that presents visual and performing arts experiences. I was especially intrigued because of my Artist Residency at Lowell Observatory and the ideas inspired.The Skyspace is located up a steep mountain so we chose to avail ourselves of the ATV available. We ascended to a cleanly designed box-like building made with nature’s stones—I liked the simplicity that doesn’t distract from the experience. We choose to have the experience in the evening hours (you can also see it in daytime). When we were let into the building it was still light and we could easily see the blue clouded sky through the roof hatch so the participants could position themselves conveniently for the event which started shortly afterwards. I positioned myself lying down and using David’s lap as my pillow.

As the sky darkened the light in the ceiling changed color tones which then made the sky appear to also change colors. This phenomenon reminded me very much of the color exercises that I did in design classes based on Josef Alber’s ideas that color is relative and it’s appearance is influenced by many factors including the colors around it.

As we sat there 45 minutes watching the colors change and interact—sky and interior, I found it to be a magical and soothing experience that transcended my experience of the everyday sky watching. There was a spiritual quality to the experience somewhat like that of the Rothko’s Chapel in Houston. I was very moved and hope that you have this experience as there are more than 85 Skyscapes located around the world.