Artist

Contact

me at lbjane@live.com

Lela Besom

is an ever evolving interdisciplinary artist from Fayetteville, AR. Her technical practices include writing, butoh, theater arts, graphic arts, and painting. After earning her BFA from The University of Kansas in 2008, Besom studied zen meditation and contact improv dance in Cambridge, MA before moving to Seattle, WA where she practiced and performed butoh dance with DAIPANbutoh Collective and theater arts at Freehold Theater. In Seattle she created and directed several solo and group performances grounded in human emotional experience and societal issues including the effects of screen technology on human life experience, work-life entrapment, longing, desire, and loss. She served as an official member of DAIPANbutoh Collective doing administrative and directorial assistant work, performing, and curating/producing a series of performance art shows called Butoh+. She performed her most recent project, “To Dance With A Seal,” with Kabriele Rosas, in Indonesia at the South Borneo Arts Festival 2018. Besom is co-creator of the international performance troupe, Trio De Femmes which can be found on Instagram and touring in Europe this summer, 2019.

When I was a Child I Played Dreaming

is an evolving series of acrylic paintings composed with the objects and images I collect.

To begin each painting, I create a story arrangement in a similar manner as a child at play. By projecting my imagination onto the elements I turn the physical into the fantastic.

These paintings offer a glimpse of my personal history. They reflect my dreams and entrapments. They build on each other and stand alone. As a medium, painting allows me to explore ideas and offer appreciation for the objects, the people connected to them, and my life.

Questions that drive me as an artist