Denise Liebl

The ● indicates sold work.

Bramble is a series of mixed media prints and paintings on paper that I began in 2019. I use graphite to transfer repeating patterns, then go back in with gouache and graphite to continue painting, moving back and forth between dark and light. An opaque water color, the gouache combines with the water soluble graphite in the process; by dampening bits of fabric, paper, and other found materials (many with emotional and family significance) and then applying graphite to the textured surface of the object, I print the image from the object to the paper. I print multiple times: the first contact is a strong image, while subsequent impressions leave ghosts behind. I rework the resulting image with gouache, thinking about levels of light and shadow. My overlaying drawings respond to these imprinted patterns. I am working on brown paper found at a used bookshop, and this color becomes the middle ground of each image. I imagine these pages to be letters without words, a communication back and forth, offering me space to process long-standing family experiences and traumas. Some of them are marked by organic imagery and metaphors. These are a shared vocabulary with my mother, and in these works, they become ways to describe daily experiences and challenges.

In this work, Denise Liebl moves beyond geometrical descriptions of boxes as she examines the commonly overlooked empty space within found objects. Scale remains unknown to the viewer in these large paintings on paper. Emptied of well-guarded possessions, the boxes transform, exposing hidden characteristics: worn edges, marred surfaces. An outside light source bounces off the framework and becomes a psychological entrance (or exit) for the box’s soul.

The ● symbol indicates sold work.

Hold is a series of monoprints by Denise Liebl. Conceptualized as sketches within a book, each work begins as a graphite monoprint and reworked with graphite, watercolor, and pencil. Untitled, the works are numbered for their respective pages in the “sketchbook” and mounted unframed. Through repetition, Liebl abstracts the architecture of a single cube and allows tonal shifts between the works to speak to times of transition and growth. The exhibition, originally displayed in the Grace R. Cavnar Gallery at Lawndale Art Center in Houston, Texas, is accompanied by an essay written by Laura A.L. Wellen.

History hovers with uncertainty in our Houston neighborhood. Unintentional neglect has left many century old houses with an unstable future. I was determined to save such a home from being torn down, but, what was presumed to be a simple remodel turned into months of discovery. Small moments of repeated neglect had worn down the modest two story structure. The house had to be deconstructed in order to be reconstructed.

In piles of discarded rubble there were fragments of a structure that was meant to withstand time. There was tenuous evidence of what was once beautiful juxtaposed with now unrecognizable architecture. Did this home’s tale of strife mirror the physical and metaphysical corrosion of the structures that are essential in our lives?

This question is what I am exploring in this series of works on paper. Using soft soluble graphite and discarded fragments from the building site I make large abstracted architectural drawings. Cardboard, wood, cheesecloth, tar paper, and nails are used to make marks and patterns on heavy Arches paper. The value range of the graphite alludes to the messy gray areas of our history that exist between the idealistic notion of black and white reasoning.