We recently connected with Lea Bodea and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lea, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

In 2016, I packed up from a life I knew for nearly twenty years in Charlottesville, Virginia and moved to Baltimore, Maryland to make visual art full time. I was forty-five years old.

I had spent most of the early 2000s working with children with Autism or families in traumatic circumstances. While working full time in challenging vocations, I spent my time at home drawing, painting with watercolor, playing guitar and singing, playing drums in local bands.

I’ve been an artist since I was a child, have always needed to translate my experience on the planet- with pen and paint, words, symbols, sounds, colors, shape and texture. To find or make meaning, to better understand myself.

Right before I left Charlottesville,
I met a woman who said something to me that resonated pretty profoundly. She said faith is not just something you have, you hold… it’s more like a muscle, you need to flex it. The more you work it, the stronger it gets.

Spending much of my time and attention at work helping others improve their circumstances…by moving to Baltimore I took the risk to do the same in my own life. It has certainly paid off.

Over the last 8 or 9 years, I’ve built an extensive portfolio of explorative artwork, built a website, sold numerous pieces, created a social media presence, have connected with and learned from other artists, have shown my work in group shows in numerous galleries, and have had two solo shows. I love my life here.

Along with these measurable achievements, came an enormous amount of clarity and healing. My work continues to evolve, although I’ve recently gotten back into my old sweet spot of doing more drawing. Losing myself in linework has been an essential process for me for over thirty years.

“Each on of us is an outlet to God, and an inlet to God.” – Ernest Holmes

Lea, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve always ached for a deeper exchange, a more intimate and authentic sense of expression and connection to the world. That which is primative, etheric, or electromagnetic is what most often, most immediatly draws me in. I approach life through my love light, my heart. Beauty in the breakdown is like my creative urge & perspective.

In 2017 I started using acrylic paint on canvas for the first time. The 15+ years previously I worked soley with watercolor and ink on paper.
I continued to explore acrylic with the linework and imagery echoing my early watercolor work well into 2020.

When the pandemic came, I went on an extensive exploration of more abstract representations. I went back to using paper, instead to manipulate paint more than brushing it. I relied on the depth and emotion of the experience rather than the identifiable images that came from it, befitting the nebulous pandemic time.

In 2023 I began primarily experimenting with collage and acrylic paint. Working this way , combining elements of what is real and what’s unreal, working through the awkward transition or intersection between the exterior and interior worlds, that continued into 2024. This year, I fine myself circling back to drawing- the kinesthetic feedback of line work on watercolor paper- is what I’ve loved for half my life.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Selling art for a full time living is not for the faint of heart, or maybe not this Capricorn for now. At the beginning of 2024 I started working full time for the first time in many years. I had to make a sharp pivot in reducing the time I have making art in order to ensure I’m making a living. When I was in my 30s I could easily balance my work life with a rich creative life playing music in bands. Now, in my 50s- I have to consciously to make time to continue growing and evolving in my art life.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Over the last few years, I have become less goal centered, more mission oriented, informed by a radical sense of self expression. Within that framework are multiple dimensions to inhabit and to explore.

For me, making visual art becomes part prayer, meditation and pathwork, where I am consciously and unconsciously learning and unlearning myself, finding balance.

Beauty in the breakdown has become my creative, kinetic urge… and perception. It often feels like I am dissecting the muse, and reforming or rearranging my perception of it. There, I am most in touch with a radical sense of wholeness, and the illusion of separation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Leabodeadesign.com
• Instagram: @leabodeadesign
• Facebook: Lea Bodea
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@bodeadesign1701?si=a-R1HGzUiq3JwmHK