Alfred Leslie and Virginia Wright – the meaning of red

In 1974-75, Alfred Leslie painted Virginia Wright, as part of his Red Painting Series. (Who she is here.)

The color can’t be said to describe her politics, which tend to be casually, even indifferently, Republican. She broke with the party in the early 1990s over the Culture Wars and their impact on the NEA. (Story here.) Her husband Bagley waited till 2004 to follow her lead, reasoning that the world couldn’t take four more years of George Bush.

Leslie painted Virginia Wright as if she were decades older than she was at the time. In his version, she might be a loose-limbed forest ranger with big bones and no make up, instead of the petite, urban and immaculately groomed woman she continues to be.

He was after the intensity of her character informed by her interest in art, which colors everything about her. Her daughter Merrill Wright once said that her mother had five children, the four of record and the fifth being art. Everybody thought she loved the fifth child best.

Operating in the tradition of Thomas Eakins, not John Singer Sargent, going for the specific, not the general, Leslie is true to his version of the facts. As he says:

You can’t alter facts by filming them over with dead romances.

And

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Leslie has a terrific Web site for his books of images (and some text), a few of which can be viewed in their entirety online.