Articles and Reviews

W42ST Magazine, As it Rises and Rises, Gwyneth Leech Paints The City That’s Never Finished by Sarah Beling, June 18, 2022

Modern Steel Construction Magazine, Oil (and Steel) on Canvas by Geoff Weisenberger, December 1, 2021

Arizona Foothills Magazine, New Exhibition at i.d.e.a. Museum, Mesa Highlights the Power of Architecture, by Christina Silvestri, January 21, 2022

All Arts, "Artists of Instagram: Meet Painter Gwyneth Leech", by Nahal Amouzadeh, October 15, 2020

W42ST, "Gwyneth Leech — Making paintings of NYC under construction as the skyline changes before our eyes!", by Phil O'Brien, September 21, 2020

Art Spiel, "Artists on Coping: Gwyneth Leech", by Etty Yaniv, May 29, 2020

City Realty, "Meet Gwyneth Leech, the Artist that Beautifully Paints NYC Construction Sites", Coleman, Michelle Sinclair, September 5, 2018

The Village Voice, "Documenting the New Towers of Old Hell's Kitchen", by Katherine Knowles, April 2, 2018

Art Fix Daily, Gwyneth Leech: Construction Series, by Susan Teller, February 18, 2018

Art Dependence Magazine, "The Monolith: An Interview", by Jennifer Sauer, January 10, 2018

New York Times "An Art Exhibit That's Good to the Last Drop", by David Dunlap, February 14, 2012

Real Estate Weekly, "You Should Be in Pictures...", by Sabina Mollet, November 22, 2019

Collateral TV, "The Monolith, Gwyneth Leech’s window on art",

by Giulia Guido, December 6, 2019

Vasari 21, "All About the New York Artists Circle", by Ann Landi, February 10, 2019

Hazal Sahin Blog, "Gwyneth Leech ile New York’tan tüm dünyaya online galeri: One Vanderbilt yükseliyor!" by Hazal Sahin, November 1, 2020

Visi, "WATCH: Gwyneth Leech’s Painted Buildings" by Lindi Brownell Meiring, January 9, 2018

City Realty, WATCH THE VIDEO: "Artist Copes with Diminishing Views in Documentary 'The Monolith'", by Michelle Mazzarella, November 29, 2017

Colossal, "The Monolith: Artist Gwyneth Leech Turns the Destructive Force of a New Building Into a Source of Inspiration", by Christopher Jobson, November 29, 2017

Two Coats of Paint, "On Procrastinating: Gwyneth Leech", by Sharon Butler, May 6, 2015

The Norwalk Hour, "Spanning three generations, a family's art on view in separate Norwalk galleries" , by Francis Carr, April 23, 2015

American Craft Magazine,"Drink Up", by Sarah Buttenweiser, April/May 2014

Azure Magazine, "Grind", by David Dick-Agnew, November/December 2013

Telegraph Magazine,"Gwyneth Leech: the Art of Paper Cups", by Sophie de Rosée , September 6, 2013

The Sunday Star Ledger, "Over and Over", by Dan Bischoff, March 10, 2013

Boston Magazine "Cambridge Anthropologie Hosts Live Art Exhibition with Gwyneth Leech", by Olga Khvan, November 22, 2013

Teller Blog, "Family / Cities Shift on View", by Susan Teller, April 17, 2013

Pennsylvania Gazette, "Cup O'Doodles", by Molly Petrilla, July/August 2011

Psychology Today "Do What You Love, Money Follows: The Coffee Cup Artist", by Susan Biali, December 9, 2011

Additional press page for Gwyneth Leech Cup Exhibitions:
Articles, Reviews and Blogs 2011/2014

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The Spur, "New York Artist Paints Perfect Families and More", by Ben Erickson, January 31, 2007

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The Marshall Independent, "Family Impact", by Cindy Votruba , January 30, 2007

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The journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society, "Don't Talk About Religion or Politics", by Don Newton, January 30, 2006

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Art New England, "Gwyneth Leech: the Way of the Cross", by Lois Goglia, October/November 2005

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New York Times, Dance Review: Suffering and Rebirth", by Jack Anderson, March 17, 2000

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Pennsylvania Gazette, "Visions and Videos of a New Scotland", by Susan Lonkevich, June/July 1998

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Penn State Altoona News, "Imprints on a Landscape: The Mining Project", by Noel Feely, May 1, 2006

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Faith and Form, "A New Journey: the Stations of the Cross for Our Time”, by Gwyneth Leech, March 2006

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From the Floor, The Church and Contemporary Art, by Todd Gibson, October 20, 2006

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The Episcopal Church, Contemoporary Icons, by Jerry Hames, March 1st, 2006

BY FRANCIS CARR Jr.
Thursday, April 23

NORWALK -- Gwyneth Leech represents the third generation in a family of artists.

"I knew from the time that I was knee-high to a grasshopper that I was going to be an artist," Leech told The Hour.

Leech's grandfather, Michael J. Gallagher, was a printmaker who documented the anthracite coal mining industry in his home state of Pennsylvania.

Now, in a surprise twist, both Leech and Gallagher are exhibiting their art in separate Norwalk exhibitions -- Leech in a solo show at Gallery on the Green, and Gallagher as part of the Center for Contemporary Printmaking's current exhibition of Works Projects Administration art, titled "WPA: Jobs."

"It was a complete coincidence," Leech exclaimed. "These two [exhibitions] are on not just in the same town, but at the same time!"

A Philadelphia native, Leech first exhibited in Norwalk ten years ago, when Vince Edwards, music director at St. Paul's-on-the-Green Episcopal Church, recommended Leech to church administrators who were looking to commission a new stations of the cross with a "contemporary flavor."

(Leech, a professional choral singer, met Edwards when he ran the chorister program at St. Bart's in New York City.)

After a year of research and work, Leech's "Stations of the Cross" went on permanent display at St. Paul's. The 14 panels of the series mix traditional Christian iconography depicting Jesus' execution with images of violent turmoil in the contemporary Middle East -- the Iraq war, Abu Ghraib prison, Darfur refugees; soldiers, barbed wire, smoke, fire.

"The paintings were installed in the church in early 2005 at a time when it was not widely accepted to [criticize] the Iraq war," Leech wrote in an artist statement. "There was initial controversy that blew up in the print press and the blogosphere. However, the congregation of St. Paul's embraced the series from the start."

Leech's current exhibition at Gallery on the Green (adjacent to St. Paul's) includes 11 oil-on-paper studies for the "Stations" series, and traces her output over the intervening decade.

"Perfect Families," a series of portraits that depict "unconventional" families Leech knows personally, was undertaken while Leech was "looking for a way back" from the darkness of the "Stations of the Cross" commission, which took a year to research and complete. "Perfect Families" was inspired by the birth of Leech's second daughter, who has Down syndrome.

"We didn't expect to have a child with special needs," Leech said. "We found that we were building a different kind of community of families, and they tended to be people who were open to -- not the traditional way, shall we say?"

Leech's neighborhood influenced the series as well.

"I live in Hell's Kitchen in New York City, so a lot of families are same-sex couples, or they've adopted children from other countries, or they're mixed-race families," Leech said of the subjects of the "Perfect Families" series.

"Hypergraphia" ("a behavioral condition characterized by the intense desire to write") consists of paper coffee cups, decorated by Leech, suspended from threads.

This ongoing series began while Leech sat, bored, in PTA meetings.

"I started doodling, and found that a used paper coffee cup was a really great surface for making artwork, and I could do it on the go," Leech said. "It was all about using what's to hand, what's really familiar. A lot of my work is about the familiar, hence the portraits of people I know, and then working on this humble coffee cup in the palm of my hand ... turning something that would be otherwise thrown out into an art object."

The designs on the cups range across the spectrum of representation: some depict bustling street scenes; others flowers or floral patterns; some are completely abstract. They have been installed in shop windows from Texas to London; the largest showing was in the Flatiron building in New York, for which Leech sat in a window five days a week for as many months, drawing on cups. In the end, there were about 850 paper coffee cups included in the piece.

Her most recent work, a series called "Reflected City," consists of paintings the New York skyline viewed from Leech's studio on the 13th floor of a building in the Garment District.

"I call it 'Reflected City' because there's a lot of glass buildings and glass surfaces that reflect other buildings, so I got really intrigued by that abstracted effect of the light and reflections," Leech said. "I have been fueled to do that by the fact that they are building a building directly behind the studio. It's currently a hole in the ground, but it will, in due course, be 40 stories, and it will completely block the view."

The Norwalk Hour, "Spanning three generations, a family's art on view in separate Norwalk galleries" , by Francis Carr, April 23, 2015