Leslie Vansen

Education

MFA, University of Colorado
BA, University of Iowa

Biography

Leslie Vansen teaches painting and drawing courses from introductory through graduate levels. She makes acrylic paintings on canvas, paper and paper board that are presented regularly in invitational and juried exhibitions and are held in numerous public, private and corporate collections nationwide, including both the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Racine Art Museum. The paintings present metaphoric investigations into the functions of work, time and repetitive figurative movement through space, suggesting, by analogy and abstraction, the residue of human action on its immediate environment.  Her work was most recently featured in the 2013 “Systems for Abstraction” exhibition at the James Watrous Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin and the 2015 exhibition, “Interface: Meetings of Art and Technology” at UWM’s Union Art Gallery.  During 2014/2015 she produced the animation projections for the UWM Dance Department’s restaging of Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset.  In 2008, Vansen collaborated with Luc Vanier, Dance, and Christopher Burns, Music for the Peck School of the Arts production “Triptych” and presented a solo exhibition at Lawrence University’s Wriston Art Center Galleries.