TITLE    : Christopher Leach Pt. 02
STORYID  : christopher-leach-pt-02
SUMMARY  : An appreciation.
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2011-03-01
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |art|artist|transgender|transvestite|transsexual|drawing|painting|surreal|surrealism|imagery|


One of the first impressions (besides the perception of the surreal) that one has upon viewing the wonderful, bizarre drawings and paintings of transvestite British artist Christopher Leach is of being overwhelmed by the sheer intricacy, density, and incongruity of the works' imagery.



For example, No. 129 (If I Ruled the World I'd Be Head Girl): viewing the drawing from left to right, across the top, one sees not only three figures, but the bare-breasted one on the left, who is wearing a mask, a spiked and studded collar, an open top, and stockings with open-toed sandals, has a phallus, the testicles of which are buttocks, the shaft of which forms the body of a violin, and the elongated and narrowed glans of which makes up the instrument's neck; the middle one of which, who wears biceps-length gloves, a brassiere-like top (pulled below her bosom), and fishnet stockings, and whose buttocks and breasts are displayed, seems to float against the coils of an elaborately decorated dragon; and the third one of which, who wears only stockings, leaps forward, her arms outstretched before her and her head down, looking more like a ship's figurehead than a woman, her pert breasts protruding, proudly, from her abdomen, nipples erect, the numbered dial of a telephone behind her.



Below and to the right of the first figure is a huge, disembodied female face, the violin-buttocks extending out from its upper lip. A teardrop flows from the corner of the head's left eye, and a webbing of fine lines, or filaments, swoop over the bridge of the nose and across the face. To the right of this gigantic head is the merged confusion of two torsos, one showing the side of its left breast, its back, and its buttocks, while the second trunk, armless and ending at mid-thigh, shows breasts, from the front, its belly, and an engorged and rigid cock.



The violin bow, held in the left hand of the violinist, points between the lips of a woman who stands at the right edge of the drawing. She wears a spiked diadem similar to the crown worn by the Statue of Liberty. From her crotch, a large, erect penis protrudes, the glans pointing into what appears to be a pair of gigantic, disembodied lips . To the left of the lips is a strange series of what appear to be airbags stacked, accordion fashion, one upon the other, the top one of which forms a pair of breasts, the upper portions of which taper into a timepiece fronted by a silver crescent. Following the penis to the accordion-like set of airbags, the eye encounters the erect penis that juts from the groin of the corseted torso that joins the smaller trunk comprised of breasts, back, and buttocks, the tip of which points toward a spread pudendum situated below the thighs of the first figure on the left of the drawing, with which the eye started its roughly circular journey around the drawing surface.



All these images are crowded together--so much so, in fact, that some of them merge with another or with others and all overlap one or more of the work's other pictures. The title is curious, because the picture shows four female figures and a fifth figure that is a hybrid of two other incomplete forms. Three of the heads are conspicuously large. Which, if any, is the "head woman" of the drawing's title? The answer is, like so much of the rest of Leach's oeuvre, vague--deliberately ambiguous, one assumes. The question as to which of the figures is the "head girl" is made even more perplexing by the fact that several of them are equipped with either a penis or a phallic substitute for the virile member.



No. 92 (The Joys of Gardening) is also a fabulous work of art, just as complicated in its way as Head Girl is in its way. Again, the viewer is apt to feel overwhelmed by the profusion of incongruous images, but the trick to viewing Leach's art seems to be to let the eye wander where it pleases until it has taken in all there is to see (it won't, because there is always something else to see, something that escaped the initial survey, but one does tend to suppose that, at some point, he or she has seen all there is to see), and then to take a slower second look, noting one's observations. For me, this approach yields the results detailed below.



Unlike Head Girl, .which is in black and white, The Joys of Gardening is in color; it appears that the artist used chalk to color this drawing or, perhaps, watercolor paint. The work shows three female--or, at least, feminine--figures, a female torso, a gigantic pair of buttocks, and a pair of breasts out of which rise two circumcised penile shafts. The first figure looks into the center of the picture from its left edge. She wears an outfit that only a fashion designer (or a transvestite artist) could imagine: a high collar; a blue-green-and-yellow-striped, tennis-style top; and white shorts with a thick, pleated waistband. The yellow straps of the top are down, over her upper arms, and her full, light-brown breasts are fully exposed, showing stiff nipples surrounded by smooth areolas. She holds something that looks similar to a rug beater.



To her right, a redheaded woman seems (at first glance) to be seated upon a stretch of green lawn, a pair of sunglasses perched above her brow and a diamond necklace draped over her upper chest. Her breasts are bare, and between them and down her belly are an arched window above a balcony, below which is the front door to the living building that she personifies. What appears to be sequins, one discovers after making the association of her body with a building, are really bricks, just as the biceps-length glove on her right arm is decorated, as it were, with a column of windows. She is not seated, as one first supposes, for, from the waist down, she merges with the ground, having no lower body at all. Behind her are treetops resembling lemon and lime tufts of cotton candy and a chimney. Between two huge arches of a stone bridge in the background, expanses of blue sky resemble huge bubbles shining with reflected light.



To her right, seated astride a pair of big, buoyant breasts that belong to a headless and armless female torso, is a harlequin-like female--or feminine--figure. Slender, with a fountain of platinum blonde hair, she is dressed in a corset that is laced at the side and in a pair of fishnet stockings. Her hips, groin, and buttocks are bare, allowing her slender, erect cock to stand upright before her tummy. She reaches out, but her lower arms and hands are nonexistent, seeming to have disintegrated in midair. Behind her, to the right, a pair of gigantic buttocks, striped from the marks of a cane, form the seat of a chair, the back of which is the framework of a wooden corset.



The lawn upon which the building-woman seems to sit (at first glance) turns out to be a brook, the edge of which overflows the breasts upon which the slender hermaphrodite is seated. A disembodied pair of huge lips seem to kiss the torso's right breast as it rears heavenward, alongside its also-up-tilted twin.. Below the breasts is a pulled-down bra festooned with strings that resemble vines. A string bikini bottom covers the torso's buttocks, but not the pudendum, the hairless cleft of which shows that someone has shaved the figure's groin. Since she lacks arms (and a head), it obviously wasn't the figure herself who debilitated her own pussy, but someone else, the identity of whom remains another of Leach's many marvelous, incongruous mysteries. A pair of lovely stockings completes the attire of this incomplete figure.



Inside a half-folded image that could be that of a leaf, a caterpillar, labia, or a combination of two (or all) of these items are two doll-like, miniature female figures of slender build. To the right of this image are a pair of breasts, the nipple of the right one of which juts, phallic-like, from its orb. The other breast lacks a nipple altogether. The round mounds also resemble testicles, which helps to create the illusion that they are parts of the privates formed by the corseted penis that juts from the left breast of the breasts-testes combination and the unambiguously erect and circumcised prick that extends from its twin on the right. From the tip of the right penis, instead of semen, a bud sprouts, blossoming into immediate fullness of life.



Not all of Leach's art is as intricate as Head Girl and The Joys of Gardening, but it would be misleading to suggest that more than a few examples are relatively simple. However, No. 11484 (Cello Woman), is one work that is simpler than most of Leach's drawings and paintings. In full color, it is a striking work, its effect stemming from its metaphorical character. The single figure, a redheaded woman clad in a light smock and matching trousers, sits, barefoot, on a throw rug, playing her cello as she reads music from a sheet displayed on a stand. Lined up behind her are a pair of houseplants. The foliage of the one to her right (the viewer's left) looks like a clump of seaweed that might easily wave in the breeze, while the one on the other side of her has more solid-looking tendrils of wood upon which are rubber tree-like leaves of a dark green color. The pot is decorative, with red-orange bands alternating with broad, dark green stripes. The bands of color are themselves decorated with green diamonds.



The plants and the pot, like the woman's red hair and her blue smock and trousers add color to the painting, but what stands out most is the instrument she plays. It is she herself! The strings of the cello are anchored in her groin, pass up, over her tummy, through the steg that is set in the middle of her belly, and between her bare breasts, where they extend over and along the wooden neck (griffbret) of the instrument that rests against her left shoulder. In stroking the strings with her bow, she is, in effect, playing herself, for she and her instrument literally are one. This painting demonstrates the truth of the notion that the artist puts him- or herself into his or her work.



Leach's work is masterful, intriguing, and wonderful, mixing sex and gender as easily as it combines nature and technology, breasts and male genitals, flesh and brick, and organic and inorganic materials. The world, as men and women usually discern it, is full of opposites and opposition, but these polarities are due more to the human mind, Leach's work suggests, than to nature itself. Opposites need not conflict, his art implies. They can be reconciled, just as ambiguities can be clarified. Even if one is a hermaphrodite or a transvestite or a transsexual, it is not he or she who is out of synch with the universe, but human beings' dichotomous separations of reality into this and that--for example, into male or female--when a whole array of other potentialities and possibilities exist between such somewhat arbitrary extremes. That's the serious point, perhaps, that Leach's art makes--or one of them, at any rate. However, it's the beautiful and creative way that his images make this point that transcends the ordinary and makes his work extraordinary. View it, enjoy it, appreciate it, love it.



UPDATE: Since I write this review, the artist himself, Christopher Leach, added the following note in an email that he sent to me.



Hi Cal Y. Pygia,



thanks for sending me the transcript of your latest review. You obviously get a great deal of enjoyment studying the detail trying to make sense of it all. What I find fascinating is the way others read my work as no doubt you find meanings that weren't intended and no doubt miss more important things I was perhaps subconsciously wanted to say.



For your interest, in 'Head Girl' the figure on the left is very much the dominant one and she's very much the 'master of ceremonies'. She could even be a circus ringmaster or the conductor of a sexual orchestra. Often I am represented in my work and in this case it's the figure with outstretched arms wanting to be loved and enjoyed as a woman.



Obviously 'Cello Woman' is an oil but my graphic colour work is done with pen and watercolour inks. However the softer colours fade and having made xerox copies I've had to sharpen and enhance this one with pencil reworking it. It is a big favourite of mine and the colour really brings it to life. In this instance I'm the figure in the rubber corset of my tetish party days enjoying the erotic garden, one of my recurring favourite themes. The woman on the left is busying herself with a garden rake.



You might wonder at how I find my titles. Well I work my best when I drift off into my imagination and I'm not trying to think too hard about it and one of the distractions is thinking what I'm going to call it. Often the title only comes almost as I'm finishing it off which means there might be the addition of lets says a clock or some falling snow. Rather than putting over a conscious message I see my drawings as a puzzle or game of chess. As I solve the drawing I create more than just the composition. A few do readily find the right name like 'Hermaphrodite Hockey', 'Teasel Tina' and 'The Swiss cheese Girl' or perhaps even inspire the creation. Others I finish untitled which means annoyingly they remain unfinished till I find one. They are just as important as the drawing and often the hardest bit to resolve. So I think it over and then maybe have to hear the right song or pass a road name I can wrap the fantasy around and it comes together.



So there's a bit more for you which no doubt will help you understand it. I'm sure you won't though as my work comes from somewhere else and I don't even know how sometimes. 

