Artist Leigh Witherell Paints the Many Faces of Grief
“The universal reaction to grief is really to hide from it, and it is this that I would like to talk about and hopefully change,” said Palm Bay artist Leigh Witherell. Witherell’s The Invisibility Project explores the many aspects of grief — something she became painfully familiar with when she tragically lost her daughter, Amanda.
Amanda was the inspiration for Leigh’s art career.
“I’ve always been an artist, but Amanda wanted me to show my work publicly,” Witherell said. “When she died, I felt it was a way to honor her memory, and now, it’s about telling a story.”
Witherell uses The Invisibility Project — a series of art pieces in the melancholic style of people grieving the loss of a loved one — to bring those intense emotions into the light. The first piece, “We Are the Story,” is a montage of the subjects and was the Los Angeles KBM Gallery’s Art Piece of the Year for 2023. This year, Witherell will focus on the individuals in the first canvas, bringing their stories to life through the unique presentation of combining art and sound.
Witherell’s melancholic style is focused not so much on despair as on depth of emotion. She said she’s always been drawn to the style but even more so after she lost her own daughter in 2021. Since then, she’s been channeling her feelings — and those universal to grieving parents — into her work.
“This style enables me to paint what I hope are beautiful scenes of figures that express not just pain or suffering, but also hope in that the everyday continues, and these figures are in that every day, trying to get some balance to a life that is no longer balanced,” Witherell said.
In order to achieve this goal, she interviews her subjects so that she can fully understand their story and bring it to life through her art. In fact, Witherell, who has a master’s degree in literature and a deep love for Shakespeare, said this is a crucial element to her art.
“I want the observer to really feel what the figure is going through and to gain some insight into their own inner world,” she said. “I needed to understand the perspectives and struggles of other grieving parents to be able to convey the many differing ways grief occurs. The interviews enable me to gain insight into the inner world of my subject.”
Witherell then includes sound bites from the interviews, available to viewers through scannable QR code. This, she says, helps the viewer more deeply understand the canvas and the person behind the figure.
Witherell said The Invisibility Project will explore more than parental grief.
“Our son and daughter-in-law experience many of the same facets of feeling invisible that we do and that surprised me,” she said. “But the universal reaction to grief is really to hide from it and it is this that I would like to talk about and hopefully change. Education is always the best way to enhance the world and learning how you can effectively help someone going through grief will be an enhancement to the mental health of society.”
While the Invisibility Project focuses on grief, Witherell said that’s just one of her many themes.
“I also explore women’s sensuality and societal issues,” she said.
Witherell was listed as the Contemporary Art Curator Artist to Watch for 2024. She has a show March 7-9 at Coastal Creative’s Nude Nite in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she’s showing her piece “Serenity and Feline Companions.” Witherell also accepts visitors to her home studio in Palm Bay.
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leighs.art
The Invisibility Project: theinvisibilityproject.org
Instagram: @leighsartfl
Facebook: /leighsartfl
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