Saskia Leek

Artist

My daughter always asks me what my favourite colour is, and I struggle to give her an answer. The truth is I don’t really have one favourite because for me attraction to colour is all about proportion and context. The people I admire the most as colourists use surprising colours in unexpected combinations and situations I make very modestly scaled paintings, but I aim for them to have impact from across a room and colour plays an important part in that. I’ve chosen strong colours not because I don’t like neutrals or subtlety but as a point of difference. I think there’s a kind of bravery in making a bold colour choice.

I’ve been painting a lot of suns lately, and this yellow is taken from a painting I’m working on at the moment. We don’t usually look directly at the sun, so we perhaps get to know it as a sensation as much as a colour. This is full sun on your face yellow.

Yellow might be the colour that divides opinion the most, but I love yellow and use a lot of it in my painting. This dragged through the mud primrose is a colour I often come back to. It might not be for everyone, but for me, it feels like the sunny doorstep of a burrow.

I'm attracted to basic forms and methods. I try to turn the volume up on simple. Much of my time in the studio is sitting and looking, or thinking for a long time about simple decisions.

One of my favourite places in Dunedin is the rock garden at the botanic gardens. The garden, one of the largest in the world, is most spectacular at this time of year, which is spring. I love how the muted purples, pure yellows, acid greens, deep velvet blues and rich carpets of red, really pop against the grey of the rock.

The colours I chose are partly a tribute to my mother, who was a craft artist with a love of strong, rich hues. This deep brown-red was lifted directly from a scarf that she made me. She also painted her houses similar deep reds.

We have a made-up family game we call grudeegabeeza. This game involves making up words and then all deciding at the same time what colour the word would be. Blubblurch is my daughters name for this kind of green. It’s also the only colour I picked that she liked.

6xColours

Saskia Leek is a New Zealand artist who currently lives with her partner and daughter in Dunedin. She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and is represented by galleries throughout New Zealand and Australia. Saskia’s paintings have a loud presence, ‘a punch from a distance’, their impact out of step with their size. She is known for her geometric abstractions of ‘found paintings’, magazine cut-outs and her bold, unexpected colour combinations.