Leila Godden

Leila Godden is a Sussex based artist specialising in seascapes and abstract paintings using acrylics.

Her seascapes explore the vast panorama of changing light, dramatic weather and powerful water, framed by rocks solid with history, yet transient with time and the rhythm of the earth. The minutiae of rock pools juxtaposed against the expansive sweep of sea and sky. Here, she feels a completeness incorporating time and space, stillness and movement.

Since August 2022 she has been based in Bexhill-on-Sea a few minutes’ walk from the beach with its ancient rockpools and an extraordinary quality of light over the sea along the South Coast.

In 2020 and 2021 her garden was the inspiration, resulting in a period of experimental works quite different from her seascapes. From this experimentation something deeper has evolved. She has returned to seascapes with a new eloquence to the mark making, composition and gestural painting.

The paintings are intended to evoke a visceral response in you, the viewer, something deeper than just “seeing”. Perhaps it taps into a memory or feeling personal to you. Beyond words but sensed and understood.

Leila exhibits in London with the Free Painters and Sculptors (FPS) and is represented by Signet Contemporary Art, Chelsea London and Bell Fine Art, Winchester. Her work has been selected for The Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) 2023, The Society of Women Artists (SWA) 2023, 2022, 2018, 2016 and 2015 and ING Discerning Eye, 2020, 2019, 2017 at the Mall Galleries in London, The Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, (RWA) 2019 and C24 Gallery in New York City 2020. She is also a member of Pure Arts Group and Sevenoaks Visual Arts Forum (SVAF).