Will McLeod is a multidisciplinary artist with a previous career in fashion design and development that informs his art making. Will currently works mainly within two mediums: textiles and painting. His specialty is crafting meticulous and epic sewn works that mirror his 2-D works. McLeod also experiments with screen printing.
McLeod has an uninhibited and graphic style with a language all his own. He scrawls out spontaneous marks that gain meaning as the composition unfolds. He uses a cast of colors and symbols that personify and ground the pictures.
Will patterns the compositions at a larger scale in to seamed cloth panels that mimic and transcend the original, smaller work on paper. The works are pulled taut and cleanly around stretcher bars, the final product glamouring the viewer. These textile works look like soft, stained-glass assemblages, or a painter’s canvas.
McLeod uses screen printing as a punk-y tool and medium to spread the word of his aesthetic via objects. Paintings or one-off graphic statements are simplified and printed on everyday items like curtains, pillows, or t-shirts. The simple prints relieve the imagery of any ostentation by letting the audience interact with the art easily in their own life.
McLeod creates pieces that glorify and illuminate process so that the viewer can see the truths of the methods, materials, and humanistic nature of artmaking while also being vague enough that the viewer can find their own truth.
Will lives and works in Hudson, NY.
