Resume

Based in Wollongong, Wendi Leigh is a re-emerging artist after a twelve-year break in which she designed and manufactured her own prints into women’s fashion. Her professional painting practice started in 1989, and in 2019 Wendi created the O.D.O.R.I art movement describing her style as ‘overt distortion of real imagery’. It has been likened to digital art, but in reality, is a personal derivation of simplifying detail to a minimum and using colour to suggest light and form. Colours are often subtle and yet at the same time strong in character -evoking a complexity of mood that is almost punctilious in its analysis of contemporary attitudes and life today. 

Her recent work has controlled detail and a warm confidence that brings in glowing colours in unusual combinations. The abstracted qualities of the paintings are always very strong both in line and tone and these new works are particularly striking. 

As a full-time artist, Wendi now devotes much of her time to experimentation with gouache on board and paper. “The gouache work utilises the flat opaqueness of the medium, likened to silk screening. The subjects include a narrative that records current life from urban sprawl, Australian flora and fauna, social interaction and household animals. These subjects hold the underlying stories of hope and joy in a time where anxiety and disillusion of worldwide unrest holds many people in negative frameworks”. Wendi describes her work as “bringing a certain peace to the viewer, which in turn renews a sense of wellbeing and happiness”. 

Wendi has won many prizes and exhibited in over 27 shows and is now represented in galleries in NSW, S.A. VIC and QLD. Wendi has built on her original study in a Diploma of Colour and Design, and in 2008 was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts with distinction from Wollongong University.