Something we rarely find in any big city. When we stand in front of Leestemaker work we are transported to that day at the beach, that sunset walk in the desert, that time we looked cloudward. We may not recognize our surroundings but all of a sudden we are in spaciousness, we can breathe, float, be, and feel just how many possibilities there are in emptiness.

TF: You've been living in Los Angeles for how long?

TF: What brought you to LA?

LL: Originally, a very strong need to escape my old culture.

TF: So it wasn’t a career choice that brought you here then?

LL: No, it was more the opposite. My career has developed more along the lines of Quantum Physics than on a linear path that most people choose, it seems. I started painting when I was about 16 or 17 years old. I guess I followed in the footsteps of a number of generations before me, in my family. I subconsciously realized very quickly that the abstract painting that I was interested in was way too intense to be able to do, being a 16 year old and not really having the psychological framework yet in my life. So, I sort of backed off from that but it led me into a whole bunch of different careers from acting, to writing; journalism, to building my own theatre with a bunch of people in Amsterdam; to finally, actually a marketing communications firm that was linking business and art into relationships together.

TF: So, you started painting seriously when?

LL: I started getting more and more stifled by the culture that I lived in in Holland and wanted to escape it for a long time. I felt that the firm I had created, was, although it was very successful, bleeding my creative heart, because it was not really what I wanted to do. And the more I tried to get rid of it, the faster it grew. So I had to do something drastic to just get rid of that life. My girlfriend at the time was British, from London. She was an actor and she started booking jobs in LA and she moved out here for work. When she said, “I’m moving to LA,” it took me five minutes to see the light, to realize this is my escape. So after I was able to sell off my company in bits and pieces, I followed her. That’s when I started looking at my own life again and said, ok now this is actually a great time to pick up that creative career that I had when I was 16, 17 years old. So that’s when I moved back into writing first and then…realizing there was something deeper…I found painting again. From the moment that I picked up the brush, I just knew this was it.

TF: When did you pick up the brush?

LL: This was about a year after I moved here. By the time I got seriously back into the work I was 33. I think there is something interesting when you start painting or seriously get into your creativity at a later age, because I think you realize that you don’t have all the time in the world. You get very focused and you move through the different layers very quickly to find your own style, your voice.

TF: What are you working on at the moment?

LL: I just came back from a trip to Japan, to a number of commissions that, being commissions, all have deadlines. Two sculptural installations of vertical triptych’s; each panel is 84 inches long, for a project in Atlanta; a painting for a reception in Newport Beach; a smaller painting, inspired by the Kyoto Series for a private client through my Florida gallery, and a small work commissioned by one of my art dealers, for their own home, which is of course always the best compliment an artist can get.

TF: It’s been brought to my attention that you are stretching your wings to the Far East. What were you doing in Japan?

LL: I’m preparing a multi media project in partnership with a museum and Japanese Television. The plan is to launch in 2006; which will be a combination of a public studio project, with a lot of ‘audience participation;’ creating an artist studio space in the heart of Ginza that in the evening turns into a television studio where we will organize casual talk shows with different people in the arts, both Japanese and a traveling, international crowd. After the studio phase, the studio will turn into a gallery space that will exhibit the work that I created in the studio phase. It’s a fun project because it will enable me to use all my different careers from the past into one project; painting, journalism, acting, writing… I also had a number of meetings with designers, architects and art consultants for a number of projects and I’ll be doing a traveling exhibit in Japan in Spring 2005. I also went back to Kyoto, one of the most stimulating and inspiring places to visit on this planet.

What I especially about is the museum’s opinion that the curator is often standing in the way instead of helping to create communication between the audience and the artist. So with Project Atelier, the artist’s studio is placed right in the center of the world, where all barriers are stripped away, rather than being isolated in an art temple.

Leestemaker's work has appeared in numerous films and television shows including the upcoming Shopgirl, Spider-man , Spider-man 2, The Clearing , Paparazzi, Bringing Down The House and Nip Tuck.

Arizona Medical Campus

Interviewed by T.Feder for Film Art LA .

Studio Photographs © Artist

© Photographs and Article copyright Film Art LA 2001-2004. All rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Film Art LA , Inc.