Courageous obedience
by Lucia Satta
It takes time to look at Lara Leonardi's paintings because there are traces of her history in each one of them.
I was privileged to see the rebirth of the artistic talent of Lara,
like a seed buried in the long sacrificial winter soil. I shared her feelings of fear and enthusiasm, pain, and rediscovery of her early works, the labor of finding her way through the difficulties of her first tormented canvases, her hunger and thirst for a good relationship with the raw materials of her art.
I watched - stunned as her courage grew, as she made her first attempts to interact with other artists, the tenacity of her questioning, I saw her along the road of humiliation unable to find herself, the surprise in her soul when she found her voice, her expression.
Speaking of her, I speak also about myself.
Lara's paintings speak of obedience.
Self-obedience, first of all. Lara paints the labor of her own soul: her own pain, the pain of others, the desire for forgiveness, the awe of beauty, gratitude for love, everything that lives in her comes into play in creating her art. It's fair, not ruling out anything about herself, not censoring any efforts, failure, mistakes, or rather, she allows them to thrive because the truth, which she loves, is a product of this process.
Obedience to reality woven together through relationships: her paintings gives visibility to what is really happening, is not a projection of the intimate. Lara is never alone when she paints. Her work is not portraits but new faces, regenerated from the fusion between Lara and the subject. Thus pieces of her old work shirts embrace the bodies of her subjects (the father, husband, friend ...), patiently sewing scars of old wounds on canvas, thick pieces of paper speak of her own poverty and that of others, an assortment of glances leave us to perceive the identification, especially in women, for example in "Chiara col suo bambino - Chiara with her Child", her newborn child, helpless in the arms of her mother, becomes the sweet embrace of Jesus who alone can support and respond to the anguish of death.
Obedience to the mysterious dynamic of artistic inspiration: Lara does not know where the picture will take her or how to get there. It's amazing how she is happy when she finishes one, because in one way or the other, she was able to receive it.
This is the irrepressible, courageous, almost shameless obedience I am referring to. The colors are aggressive and unpredictable compared to her apparent fragility. The aggressive red faces represent passion, love, suffering, blood and fire. The white is never a reflection of external light, but the light of Jesus that is mixed with red. The blue is not like the sky of Giotto, is much more mysterious, sometimes entering into the depths, it is sometimes ambiguous, other times it veils and unveils. The green is more playful, less demanding.
The eyes are the center, are always a reflection of the soul. They never look at the viewer, even when they stare at you, as in the portrait of her daughter Emma, but they lead you to look elsewhere.
It takes time to view the pictures of Lara, you have to allow the portrait to lead you where it wants to.