Lesley Bodzy

Lesley Bodzy

American

Lesley Bodzy is a contemporary artist whose multidisciplinary practice includes painting, sculpture, and installation. Working across both traditional and unconventional materials, she is widely known for her innovative approach to paint as both image and object. Bodzy transforms liquid pigment into draped, suspended, layered, and cast forms that challenge conventional definitions of two-dimensional and three-dimensional art.

Bodzy's work is rooted in material investigation and an acute sensitivity to texture, surface, and form. She continuously explores how paint behaves as a physical substance, considering its weight, movement, tension, and capacity to record and hold gesture. This inquiry has led her to create sculptural works in which poured and layered paint is allowed to dry, bend, and fold before being cast in bronze or presented as freestanding pieces. These works retain the immediacy and fluidity of their original states while acquiring a sculptural presence that reorients expectations of medium and form.

Alongside her sculptural investigations, Bodzy makes paintings that echo the material intensity of her three-dimensional work. Her canvases and surface-based pieces often balance restraint and excess, using subtle chromatic shifts, surface tension, and repetition to evoke emotional and psychological landscapes. Across all modes of making, her practice engages themes of presence and absence, containment and release, and the interplay between fragility and strength. 

Bodzy holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2021) and a Bachelor of Arts from Mount Holyoke College. She also studied at Hunter College Studio Art where she worked with artists such as Gabriele Evertz, Robert Swain, and Valerie Jaudon, and at the Art Students League of New York with instructors including Susan Shatter and Henry Finkelstein. Further studies include a drawing intensive with Graham Nickson at the New York Studio School. In addition to her art training, she earned a Juris Doctor degree from the New York University School of Law, reflecting her broad intellectual interests and rigorous analytical training.

Bodzy's work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Notable recent solo presentations include Lesley Bodzy: Levity and Depth at M. David & Co. Gallery in New York (2025), The Soft Embrace in Chelsea, New York (2023), and Folds of Desire at Yvonamor Palix Fine Arts in Houston (2022). Her work has also been featured at major venues and art events including Future Fair NYC (2025), SPRING/BREAK Art Show NYC (2022), ChaShaMa, the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut, the Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Holy Art Gallery in London, United Kingdom. Her art is represented by galleries including A.I.R. Gallery NYC, The Painting Center NYC, DM Gallery NYC, Criss Collaborations NYC, and Yvonamor Palix Fine Arts in Houston, and is included in private and institutional collections in the United States and abroad.

Through an ongoing commitment to experimentation and material rigor, Bodzy's work positions painting and sculpture as fluid modes of inquiry, capable of expressing complex emotional and psychological states. Her practice reflects a deep engagement with time, touch, and the expressive potential of materials themselves.