Over the past several years my creative practice has transitioned from painting to photography with my formal training as a painter informing my work in important ways. In my early experiments with photography I was shooting interiors primarily of 18th-century country houses in England. In early 2013, I embarked on a collaborative project with a model to explore figurative imagery and narrative, which involved long exposures and carefully choreographed motion. The work was a series of “short stories” shot on film. Later that year, I purchased a medium-format digital camera, which changed literally everything in my studio. Color and composition have come to the fore, and the newest images have become almost entirely abstract. I am now, in many ways, painting with my camera. I have a B.F.A. in painting from Boston University, 1979; and an M.F.A. in painting from American University, 1983. I studied photography at ICP in New York.
Aleya Lehmann Bench
Studios
Adams
Aleya Lehmann Bench worked in the Adams studio.
Given to the MacDowell Association by Margaret Adams of Chicago, the half-timbered, stuccoed Adams Studio was designed by MacDowell Fellow and architect F. Tolles Chamberlin ca. 1914. Chamberlin was primarily a painter, but also provided designs for the Lodge and an early renovation of the main hall. The studio’s structural integrity was restored during a thorough renovation in…