I believe that my passion for creating art comes from my prior career as a ballet dancer, teacher and choreographer. I was very fortunate to be a part of three world-renowned ballet companies. The first of those being in England with The Royal Ballet, the second with The Stuttgart Ballet company in Germany, and the last in Toronto, Canada where I taught at the famous National Ballet of Canada and its feeder school, the National Ballet School.

As I look back over this period in my life and how it exists today, there are many similarities. In the past, there was arranging choreography, music and costumes to put all the various elements together to make a whole or finished piece. Now, instead of using my body, choreography and music to make ballet, I use paint, color, beads and found objects to make my art.

As a child growing up in South Africa, flowers were everywhere; especially in our back yards. My parents always assigned me to do the floral arrangements for their dinner parties. To this day, I still love flower arranging and working in my garden. Now I have added the painting element to my arrangements. My paintings are all very spontaneous, heavy with paint and free flowing. I love doing these as they are also rather experimental and I never quite know how one will turn out.

Creating my jewelry started out by making paper maché beads that once painted, look like agate, jasper, tigers eye and other semi-precious stones, except much lighter to wear around one's neck. I then went to a wonderful bead workshop in Tuscon, Arizona and got bitten by the bead bug. Many years later I opened my own retail store where I carried millions of beads, pearls, crystal and some precious stones. My favorite times were doing commission pieces for brides and their extended party. I would sometimes have to include a bit of the mother and grandmother’s pieces of jewelry into a head dress or necklace; giving me a real glimpse into the bride’s history and bringing it into current times. Once again my love of flowers would prevail, and I therefore have loved designing for brides.

Getting to my use of textiles in my wearable art came by accident when one day I happened to be washing one of my son's favorite woolen sweaters and didn't realize that it would come out of the washer half the size and all felted up. Not being a person who discards anything that could be recycled creatively into something else, I started to make hats, purses, and brooches out of these "shrunken sweaters." I now love to find old crochet table cloths, buttons, vintage fabric and the like to make a unique piece of wearable art.

I would have to say that my work has many stages, lots of color and lots of movement. I guess I still have "dancing in my blood and combinations in my head."

- Leigh Bennett

For more information about any of my artwork,
please call me at 440.552.8578 or use the email link in this web site.