Artist Interview with Leisl Baker

Leisl Baker, Australian artist. Original landscape oil paintings, The Corner Store Gallery. — Leisl Baker in her studio.

Artist Interview with Leisl Baker

We’re thrilled to welcome Queensland-based painter Leisl Baker to The Corner Store Gallery for her first solo exhibition with us, Familiar Ground. Known for her expressive landscapes and distinctive sgraffito technique, Leisl captures the essence of place through both studio work and en plein air painting. In this interview, she shares the inspiration behind Familiar Ground, the role of memory and connection in her landscapes, and how painting outdoors continues to shape her practice.

Familiar Ground launches online August 24th at 7pm with doors open August 27th - September 6th. View the exhibition catalogue here.

Tell us a little about your background, how long have you been painting?

I’ve been painting for as long as I can remember but full time since 2017.

The title Familiar Ground suggests a personal connection to place. What landscapes or memories are at the heart of this exhibition?

The title ‘familiar ground’ struck a chord with me because it goes some way to explaining a deep sense of connection that certain landscapes can evoke, even though they are not necessarily familiar to me personally, they somehow ‘feel’ familiar. Each of the works in this exhibition feature locations where this ‘familiarity’ felt particularly strong for me. One work in particular ‘The Bottom Paddock’ is actually a familiar place near Toowoomba where we owned a farm for many years. ‘High Country Greens’ and ‘Heatwave’ (en plein air) are scenes that are near where I currently live and work around Toowoomba / Crows Nest, Queensland. The others, such as ‘Feels Like Home’ and ‘No Words II’ (Byron Bay Hinterland) are places where I felt this strong connection. ‘Liquid Memory’ recalls a visit to the Royal Botanic Garden in Hobart. The remainder of the works (‘Another Day In the Sun’, ‘Myalla Creek’ (en plein air), ‘Weather from the East’ (en plein air) and ‘Edge of the Wild Garden’ (en plein air) are inspired by a beautiful property in the Monaro Plains region where I was lucky enough to spend a week painting. This place really resonated with me and have continued to be inspired to paint scenes from there since.

Your process of drawing lines into wet oil paint creates such a distinctive texture. Can you share how you developed this approach?

The scratching (Sgraffito) is something I love to do at the end of making a painting; it just comes naturally to me and happens at the very final stage when I also scratch in my signature. Even before working in oil (wet on wet), I have always felt compelled to ‘complete’ a work by drawing over the paint which created a similar effect. It’s something that I need to do but I try to keep it limited to hinting at small detail that the painting doesn’t capture.

What role does working en plein air play in your practice, and how does it influence the work you create in the studio?

Working en plein air is really key to my practice for two main reasons; firstly, I find the sensory immersion in a landscape really inspires me to paint and enables me to connect more with its ‘essence’, and secondly, I find the process (and challenge) of working en plein air valuable for honing observation and painting skills, keeping things fluid and loose as much as possible. My plein air work influences the studio work because it sort of ‘imprints’ a place (and feelings associated with it) on me in a way that sketches and photos simply can’t. Although I work from photos in the studio, my en plein air studies act as a kind of shorthand for the parts of the scene that caught my attention or inspired me, as well as the data associated with it like the time of day, temperature, sounds and mood that can help me travel there again from the studio.

What's next for you?

A trip or two to inspire a new body of landscape work and a residency in Tasmania in early 2026 which I am really looking forward to. I’m also working on dates for some en plein air workshops around Ravensbourne & Crows Nest, where I now have my own little gallery.