Two years ago New York Lawyer Eric Lesh made a major life change swapping his role \working for Lambda Legal where he was recognized as one of the 40 Best LGBTQ+ Lawyers Under 40 by the National LGBT Bar Association to fulfill a long held dream. He is also a portrait and figurative artist and opened his own gallery in Provincetown to show his own work and that of other aspiring queer artists.
PTown at the very tip of Cape Cod has been a artists colony for over 100 years and has been the home of some of the very best American artists. It is also a gay mecca and the LGBTQ+ community are a significant part of the Town which rightly has such well-deserved global reputation for its sheer diversity.
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The other reason that so many of us are so happy to be able to call Ptown home is its very evolving culture. Lesh is part of this movement with his sheer enthusiasm and patronage of new generations of queer artists that introduce their work to a very receptive audience.
Most weeks in the summer Lesh presents the work of different artist, many of them making their PTown debut. This week its DANI TORRENT a queer artist from Barcelona who works on intimacy, and the need to dissolve in the other, through affection and empathy.
Lesh explains: At a time when social networks push us to continually pose and pretend a life that is not; His work tries to show what those who love each other do, when no one is looking. Bodies that communicate without words, that move intuitively adapting to each other. Everyday moments without epicness, far from individualism and competitiveness, that we keep to ourselves, avoiding displaying them so as not to cheapen them.
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Hence, his concept of art is a way to connect directly and emotionally with other people, recognizing through his work everything that we as humans have in common.
To do this, he likes to work in a gestural and direct way, trying to avoid long processes by using acrylic for works on canvas, and pencils, gouache and watercolors for his creations on paper.
As an art historian, he draws from many references in his works: Pontormo, Friedriech, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Hiroshige, Hockney… each one interests him for different reasons: “an artist’s art is more personal the more open he is to different stimuli.”
