Jenny Leach Paintings, Prints, Drawings from 1986 to 2016

Jenny Leach's monograph shows 30 years of her creative life, starting with the experimental sculpture, bold wild drawings, and etchings of her student days. Particularly interesting are the paintings and drawings which she has done from memory, several of them reworked as etchings, often, to my mind, more successfully. They demonstrate the tension she feels between working figuratively and abstractly, and many of them are rather Gorky-esque with an underworld atmosphere – bars and dives, waiting rooms and dark streets. The still lifes are terrifically vigorous and darkly worked, but in contrast the life drawings, done more recently, are beautiful and lightly, loosely and sensitively drawn. Jenny says she regards the human figure as the "ultimate challenging subject matter” and each one is a risk the outcome of which is unknown. The portraits show great tenderness for her subjects; for her mother in hospital with, strikingly, a bird of prey on her arm; for her father falling asleep with Milli the dog; and for her old dog Tess in repose, long-boned and whiskery. It's a book I find renewed interest in revisiting, not least because Jenny was once my teacher and the drama and skill in the pictures are a means of knowing her better!

This is an inspired book, a fascinating insight watching style and design change as the artist is influenced by her life. A delight to have on the coffee table to browse through at will.

I really appreciate the Study for.. alongside the final paintings, the etchings and engravings, and the Life Drawings. In fact it is an all round fascinating collection of examples of her work.