Belonging

Belonging is a series of circular, spiral-based paintings concerned with longing, enclosure, and the desire for connection. Made during a period when the artist was thinking deeply about belonging, the works use the circle as both image and structure: a form of gathering, containment, return, and possible wholeness. The paintings are built through texture, gesture, and surface. Swirling forms move across the panel, sometimes held within the frame and sometimes seeming to extend beyond it, suggesting that belonging is not fixed or fully contained. It is something in motion: sought, imagined, and brought into being through repeated gestures.

In relation to Leder’s broader practice, Belonging shares an interest in perception, fragmentation, and the instability of form. But where other bodies of work use rotation, doubling, or optical structure to interrupt recognition, these paintings approach the question more materially. The surface itself becomes the site of feeling. Paint accumulates, catches light, obscures, and reveals. The circle becomes less a symbol than an attempt: a way to picture community, love, and connection as something both desired and actively made.