Gallery Exhibit

Subject Matters:

The Art of Disability Culture

Catherine & Francesco Lecce-Chong

Gallery

Ruth’s Table presents
Subject Matters: The Art of Disability Culture
3160 21st Street
San Francisco, California
Phone 415 642 1000
10 – 5 | M – F
Saturdays by Appointment

April 27th through June 23rd, 2023

guest at ruth's table exhibit

About the Artwork

Have you ever wanted to touch art in a gallery? My creations invite viewers to feel the surfaces. I have an intimate experience when practicing art because I use my sense of touch.

Welcome to my accessible website of mixed media tactile paintings, drawings, installations, and sculpture. Since 2018, all my artwork is fully described physically, historically, culturally, and with personal insights.

My large images express my admiration for iconography which celebrate great beings and their stories. I was surrounded by Catholic images during a difficult family life of abuse and disability. This celebratory and educational artform appears in all cultures…

I often mix a diversity of cultural or racial images, languages, and ideas. My life experience has been full of diversity and inclusion, therefore, I cannot create with a limited palette of philosophy or small mindedness. As a global artist, I am a witness and a journalist.

I see life and art through a lens of complexity, fear and hope. Hope and its uncertainty guide me to make portrait icons to contemplate and to report the dangers and impermanence of life and environment.

Yet I make simple, figurative, folk-like and story-like images. I paint with bold textured colors in the underpaintings. Then I mute these artworks with many transparent white glazes.

I create drawings and sculptures that are translucent and fragile. Light is a crucial ingredient to design my creations, but it also causes some of my blindness and pain.

I create my art in different kinds of light. This is because of my aesthetic interest, its symbolism, and to adjust to my visual impairment. For example, I use many lamps, lanterns, flashlights, little lights on my gloves, or candle light.

I am not concerned with archival durability with my fragile work addressing tragedies in this transient world. My art can dissolve or change with patches, edits, and transformations by involving people to work with me.

I admire manuscripts, scriptures, and books. There are tactile letters, numbers or braille embedded in my work.

Because I am also a meditation teacher, I often include hidden writings of meditations or quotes in my artwork.

Artwork

A quick peek at seeing my art in a different light…

Catherine Lecce-Chong

Unseen, Unsafe, Bambi’s Kingdom

Catherine Lecce-Chong

White Blindness Series

The Isolation Icons

Catherine Lecce-Chong

Rose Colored Glasses. The Children.

Catherine Lecce-Chong

San Francisco Bay Wisdom Log

Catherine Lecce-Chong

Zen Calligraphy & Mark Making Series

Catherine Lecce-Chong

Once Upon a Time

Cathy painting Dead Bambi by candlelight

My Story

To be closer to my art, I want and need to use my tactile sense. Have you ever wanted to touch an artwork in a museum or gallery? My creations invite touch.

When I start a new work, I want to feel the loaded brush of one paint color and freely paint the entire canvas surface. No thinking, just feeling. I really enjoy the slight bounce of the canvas responding to the touch of the brush. At the finish of the painting, the original paint color is only left at the border and maybe a few details.

Art has been a sacred practice since early human history. In this global pandemic time, I needed this comfort, being isolated in my studio and in life. Even secular images can become sacred in the making. Certainly, I felt comforted as my studio started to populate with iconic beings. My images became simple, bold, iconic. My isolation…

Andrea, Guide Dog

Click to view larger in Lightbox mode.

Watercolor veil

Buy Artwork

My work is for sale, and a portion of the profits will go to a nonprofit that we choose together. All artwork is $2,200, which includes packing and insurance. Just let me know which piece you’re interested in.

Signup to get updates about Lecce-Chong artwork

* indicates required

We will process the personal data you have supplied in accordance with our privacy policy.