Leef Evans began painting seventeen years ago and has been painting nearly everyday since. Painting seems to be the only effective way to assuage his chronic depression, a problem he has dealt with his entire adult life. His paintings are aggressively anti-autobiographical, concerned exclusively with colour, form, and composition. Even the subject matter is arbitrary. To this end, he walks around Vancouver looking for compelling compositions, be it hydrants or viaducts or bridges or people, and photograph the figurative structures and later paints them. Often the work is done upside down or sideways.
Evans’ studio has been closed for eighteen months and he has been doing the psychological equivalent of counting sheep for over a year and a half. He is currently working on a new multi-year project where he will stretch one hundred 27″ x 36″ canvases, upon which he will paint one hundred images of Vancouver.
