Winery Continues Bay Area California Artist Series
October 8, Sausalito, CA –Madrigal Family Winery Tasting Salon & Gallery in Sausalito hosts the 34th artist reception in its Art and Wine series on Thursday, November 7th, featuring the work of local professional Marin County Artist, William Leidenthal. The opening reception is from 5:30-7:30pm and features the “Living in the Universe” artwork. The installation will be on exhibit in the Madrigal Salon from October 24th through December 18th.
William Leidenthal Artist Statement 2018
Where were you when you first thought yourself standing on the Earth?
I make paintings about the Earth, our living planet. My paintings are not pictures of the world. They are icons, metaphors, and symbols for physics, Biology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Ecology, Geology, etc.
I never start work from any picture or idea of a particular landscape, or any know place. Each painting grows, evolving and creating its own unique space as I manipulate a constantly revised landscape iconography. The paintings become their own reality – a place of paint, representing a larger existence that has no limit and cannot be fully experienced.
“Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.”
To express this paradox of form and emptiness, my painting is most satisfying to me when the work manifests an ambiguity between the abstraction of materials and an image of our environment. I am fascinated with the human ability (even compulsion) to see concrete images in natural abstract patterns (“pareidolia”). I try to paint in that space between the known and the unknown. How does one create a visual document about the existence of phenomena that cannot be seen and is not known?
This challenge has become my path as a painter. I never start work from any picture or idea of a particular landscape, any known place. Each painting ‘grows’ without preconception, evolving and creating it’s own unique space as I manipulate a constantly revised landscape iconography. The paintings become their own reality—a place of paint, representing a larger existence that has no definition and cannot be directly experienced.
There is a universe of distance and tension between what exists and what humans can know about Existence. My paintings are signs acknowledging that enigma. Our beliefs about the Truth of the Real World are really just so many stories. And everyone has a story. These paintings are my story.
William Leidenthal is an artist and painter living in the San Francisco Bay Area. William grew up in Palo Alto, California, in the 1950s and 60s. His primary artistic genre is “abstract landscape” oil painting. William has been showing his paintings, drawings, etchings, and other art works throughout the United States—from New York to Los Angeles, Honolulu to Miami—since 1979.
He received a Master of Fine Arts in painting in 1987 from East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina and a Bachelor of Arts (with Highest Honors) in Liberal Studies, 1984, University of Hawaii at Hilo.
Entrance to the Madrigal art and wine event is complimentary. RSVP to Patricia Gatti sausalito@madrigalfamilywinery.com
The Madrigal Sausalito Tasting Salon & Gallery is open from 12-7pm Thursday through Monday. For information, contact Patricia at (415) 729-9549 or pgatti@madrigalfamilywinery.com
About Madrigal Family Winery
Located on Highway 29, halfway between Calistoga and St. Helena in the renowned Napa Valley, the Madrigal Family Winery continues the family tradition of viticultural leadership and wine production. Since the 1930s, the family has been building its reputation and earning recognition for their vineyard management program as well as their wines. Situated on 40 acres of estate vineyards, the state of the art Madrigal Winery specializes in Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, Sauvignon Blanc, and small lots of single vineyard and estate wines. Today, Madrigal Family Winery is run by Chris Madrigal, the family’s 3rd generation.
