At the NEWSPACE Gallery where Kristin Leachman's "New Paintings" were on view last Fall, Joni Gordon, the gallery's long-time owner and director, sums up the nature of the braid paint style that is uniquely the artist's: "The familiarity of the braid is transcended by the color, light, space and surface of the painting. The image has been stripped of its nostalgia and has entered the current dialog with a vocabulary of its own."

It wasn't until I looked hard and long at Ms. Leachman's work that I comprehended viscerally what Ms. Gordon is saying. That was last summer at the artist's lofty studio where these large painted birch boards were available for the Southern California Council of the National Museum of Women in the Arts private viewing and dialog with the artist. There, in front of these woven tonalities one is immediately intrigued by what at first glance looks like braid rugs attached to panel boards, or at best, paintings of braids.

Initially, the painted braid evokes a comfortable domestic familiarity: cozy floor rugs in mountain cabins or woven samplers hanging on a wall; young girls plaiting each other's hair braids while gossiping and storytelling. Beyond the daily mundane my mind insists that I consider the bigger picture: stories that weave thru all of our lives, stories as commonality uniting the human spirit into a whole. A painting of passages, if you will.

And then click, I got out of my head. Much like a rewarding meditation session, I could only "get" the realization of the experience by not thinking about the experience. And so, after going from thinking about the paintings to being in front of the paintings, I was struck by a resonation of colors playing against each other. Finally, and gratefully, I became aware of a quality of light that played off the color, a combination that evoked something like a distant but pleasant memory seeping into my conscious thoughts. Much like an experience I once had while looking at a Rothko painting; it was as if I was being uplifted and grounded at the same time. In the tradition of a Light and Space artist, Leachman, while incorporating the pattern of a braid, as well as references to nature, has created a stunning kaleidoscope of symmetrical striations of color and light. Is the braid there mostly to rally the light and engage our senses with a rich palette of colors?

Leachman describes the braid as an image that "embodies her artistic concerns." Not only is the hand hooked rug's braided form a commonly identifiable reference from everyday culture, it is also a kind of low art form, and the juxtaposition of both serve as an inspiration to Leachman while losing no sense of refinement and skill.

"By creating a painting with this image and transforming the rugs' composition from coiled to stripes, and the material from wool to paint, these works miraculously enter the dialogue of high art." As an Eastern native who migrated west, she can't help but question the rules of artistic engagement; the qualifications of good art and bad art, good taste and bad taste, and art vs. craft. "My intention is that the works resonate between these conceptual and formal elements, and that each painting be about my struggle to bridge the gap between high art and low culture… It is a fascinating undertaking, and one that fuels my attempt to freeze the real and the abstract in one overall act of painting."

Leachman's art is elegant and edgy, visceral and smart. It brings mind, being and awareness to the viewer's experience. She is as deft at her craft, her design skills, and her execution of intention as she is at engaging the viewer. None of this is by accident. She successfully reconfigures convention, whether it is of paint, subject matter, cultural icons or our definitions of aesthetics.

You may think a braid is an ordinary reference, but Kristin Leachman's "braid paintings" are not everyday stuff.