Leslie Bostrom received her BA from the University of Maine, Orono, and her MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Between undergraduate and graduate school, she worked as a master printer in San Francisco, specializing in intaglio.
Bostrom has taught drawing, painting, and printmaking at Brown University for 33 years. She has exhibited her work in solo shows in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, St. Paul, Philadelphia, Seoul, South Korea, and Sydney AUS, and has been represented in group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times and the New Yorker. Her most recent solo show was at the Main Gallery at University of Rhode Island, where she exhibited large paintings that were “combination” images on stretched canvas and sheets of plywood. Bostrom is interested in the interaction of words and images in painting and for most of her career she has been making works that engage political topics such as environmental degradation, human migration, feminism, and LGBQT issues. Her most recent paintings feature birds that she has seen while pursuing one of her other passions- birding.
Bostrom has lectured about her work at over 30 universities and museums, most recently at Nanjing University in Nanjing, China.
Select solo/two person exhibitions
2024
WILDLIFE, New Paintings, Anglim/Trimble Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2019
This Story Started a Lot Earlier, Main Gallery, University of Rhode Island
2017
The Uncanny, watercolors, Vidi Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Drawings On Plywood, Project Room, URI
2016
New Paintings, Atrium Gallery, Granoff Center, Brown University
2014
Small Paintings, Pennsylvania State University, Abington
2013
New Paintings, Chazen Gallery, Wheeler School, Providence, RI
2012
Monster Flowers, Brenda Taylor Gallery, New York
Select group exhibitions
2019
Re-Examining Conservation, Juried Show, Granoff Center, Brown University
Re-Seeding the City RI Statehouse
2018
Reimagining Gender: Voices, Power, Action URI Main Gallery
2015
Network Rhode Island Anniversary Show, Candita Clayton, Pawtucket
2015 Faculty Exhibition, Bell Gallery, Brown University
2013
19 on Paper @ 25 Years, Newport Art Museum
2010
Gallery Group Show, Brenda Taylor Gallery, NYC
San Diego Art Fair, represented by Brenda Taylor, San Diego CA
Networks 2010 Newport Art Museum, also featured in a video made by Richard Goulis, to premier October 17th at Chace Center, RISD. Will also be shown on Channel 36.
Select visiting artist
2019
Artist Lecture Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
Conference Lecture, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China 2014
Visiting Artist, Pennsylvania State University, Abington
2013
Visiting Critic, RISD, Graduate Printmaking
2012
Visiting Artist/Lecturer, University of New England, Biddeford, Maine
Public collections
Fage USA
Bell Gallery, Brown University
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
Stedman Art Gallery, Camden Campus, Rutgers University Providence Public Library
Newport Art Museum Naksan Gallery, Seoul, Korea Debs & Co. Gallery, NY Arjo Wiggins Company University of Rhode Island
Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art, France
Bibliography
2013
Anya Ventura, “Monster Flowers/Leslie Bostrom”, Art New England
2010
Networks 2010 catalog and video
2005
Meredith Fife Day “The Bird Disaster Series: Works by Leslie Bostrom”
Art New England, April/May ’05 p.35
2004
Christine Temin, “‘Annual’ a la carte”, Boston Globe, Friday, June 18
Catalog, The 2004 DeCordova Annual Exhibition•Catalog, It’s for the Birds, Bernice Steinbaum, curator
2000
Hammond, Harmony, Lesbian Art in America A Contemporary History pp.133, illustration, also pp. 196,197 Rizzoli, 2000