Helen Lesnick Art

Helen Lesnick is an artist/filmmaker currently living in Carlsbad, California.  She’s spent most of her life on the East coast, mostly in New Jersey and New York. She has been drawing and painting since she was a child and had a few exhibits of her work when she was in high school.  She graduated with a degree in Literature and Theatre Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.  After graduation, she pursued an acting career in NYC appearing in several off-Broadway productions.  She studied acting with the renowned acting teacher, Michael Howard.  She left acting to pursue rabbinical studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Los Angeles, and Jerusalem.  After the program, she lived for 7 years in Tel Aviv and returned to acting and artwork. 

 

She has always been most interested in the complexities and expressiveness of the human face.  She is currently concentrating on oversize portraits.  Expressionism has had the biggest impact on her and among her influences are Kirchner, Marc, Beckmann, and Kandinsky.  Her color choices are based on light and shadow and feeling.  After making a preliminary sketch, she always begins with the eyes because as she is working on the portrait, she wants to feel engaged with the person.  For the same reason, she almost always choses to have the subject looking directly out at the viewer.  Her objective is to have the subject directly engage the viewer.