We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marietta Patricia Leis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Marietta Patricia, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Because I began my creative life very early and worked professionally as a dancer and actress since my teens I feel I’ve always taken risks—auditioning, learning to stretch my abilities by learning new choreography and scripts and learning to work with new companies, in new locations with new people. I learned not to let fear of the unknown control my life. The day after I graduated high school I moved to NYC to study and work—even at odd jobs that supported me. I forfeited going to college at that time as I was eagar to ‘get started’—it was risky not to have a solid backup plan to fall back on but I did not want to ‘fall back’ I wanted to succeed. The good thing in retrospect was that I pursued making visual art between jobs to keep being creative and visual art later became my focus. Also resilency and tenacity became the name of the game. I was prepared to deal with anything that happened in my work and life.

Marietta Patricia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My life in the creative world began very early and has continued to interest and inspire me to this day at age 87. I love the challenge of trying new materials in new ways and learn to bend them to my will. That is exciting to me as I am never bored in my work. Also, when I decide on a topic/issue that I want to communicate in my work eg: climate change or migratory movement, I find that people respond to different media and thus my ideas better—it’s an inclusive process. All my art is reductive boiled down to the essence—I have grown to appreciate restraint—not spilling all the beans at once. Using dance, audio, music and poetry with my visual art especially makes me happy. When combined disciplines resonate with one another there is a collaboration that, for me, enriches the intention. Early in my career it was a commercial problem as galleries wanted me to have a signature or focus so I had to present only one aspect of my work in those venues. If I changed mediums I was sometimes ‘let go’. In recent years artists working in different mediums has become more acceptable both in instiututions of study and commercially and noncommercially. When I got my studio art degrees MA/MFA I had to declare a medium. Now my signature is that I do use different mediums and disciplines in my work.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My creative pursuits started when I was age 7 and saw the movie, Unfinished Dance, with tickets I won for coloring a picture for a local paper. The movie stirred me and I started ballet lessons that taught me the discipline I have today; to strive to make better work, to always do my creative work in some fashion every day, to be able to be and work alone and set my own goals, to not be discouraged by other people or the outside world, to be authentic. I attribute my creative life always and now as an interdisciplinary artist as keeping me honest and at times saving my mental health—it is my refuge and also a way to communicate my interior landscape as well as my regard for our planet and all life and sentient beings!.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

It is important for me to share my story as a lifetime artist—I am 87 years old. People who pursue the creative life must understand the hills and the valleys that a longtime career inevitably experiences. I tell young people just starting that they must resolve their feelings of rejections because they will come. Also they must cobble a life together to financially and spirtulally suport themselves and maybe a family if they wish. When I was a single mom with 2 young children I had to keep my paintings under my bed and pull them out at night to work on the kitchen table. In the daytime I worked in a psychiatric clinic as the assistant director that thankfully was exciting, intuitive and very creative. To qualify to do this work I had to achieve academic degrees for the first time and a license. But this work gave me the assuarnce that my children and I had a future and that was a priority. I was able in a more limited way to attend wonderful art classes during this time as well as exhibit my work and I continued to grow as an artist. Artists can be assurred that they can always manage a way when they have passion for their work and develop tenacity and resiliency.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mariettaleis.com
• Instagram: mariettapatricialeis
• Facebook: Marietta Patricia Leis
• Linkedin: Marietta Patricia Leis
• Youtube: mariettapatricialeis1282
• Other: Wikipedia: Marietta Patricia Leis