Leonie Barton’s practice is grounded in process – in the physical act of painting itself. While references to lived experience, observation, and memory may provide a point of departure, they remain only a beginning. What follows is sustained time in the studio – doing, responding, and refining until the painting arrives to meet her. When the work feels balanced and quiet, it is complete.

Each work begins with a foundational layer of wax, oil, and pigment, which is subsequently stained to draw out the grain and any distinctive marks created through the wax application. From these traces, loose shapes begin to emerge. These forms are gradually developed through a series of intuitive responses either brought forward or obscured, until a composition resolves itself.

Says Barton, “The palette is shifting, some shapes more representational, the textures not yet brave. There is a keen desire to go outside and paint ‘en plein air’. I am, for the moment, however, still bound to paint within the studio, from where I am surrounded on every side with an outlook to the forest, and whilst I wrestle with and explore the transition my work is making – from pure abstraction to include subjective natural elements – it is the forest that will be my doorway through to what is to come.”