Enrique Leal is Associate Professor in Printmaking at the Fine Arts
College of the University of Castilla La Mancha, Cuenca, Spain.

Originally from Recife, Brazil, Leal has trained as a printmaker in the
United States and received his B.F.A. from the Polytechnic University
of Valencia and M.F.A. and Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the University of
Castilla La Mancha.

He has been the recipient of printmaking fellowships from the Institute
of Iberian-American Culture, the Spanish Academy in Rome, and a
visiting artist/teacher at Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper.

Leal's work has been exhibited and is found in collections in Brazil,
Spain and the United States.
"Listened Reading"

2009
Digital print with embossment on
Fabriano Rosapina 220gr.
15" x 20"

Working with another artist's
visual element proved to be very
challenging and required that I lay
aside the ideas I had established
for the collaborative print. This
forced me to look very closely at
Kathleen O'Connell's work to see
if I could come upon inherent, yet
unexplored aspects of the object
and the photographic image that
would contribute in creating a
printed image.

Altering the image's position
brought it out of its objective
presentation and allowed for its
further rendering and
transformation.

Each decision led to new tasks
that required further
considerations. The
mirrored configuration enhances
the organic attributes of the
structure and conveys the
specular properties of
printmaking. The small book-
shaped embossment references
wood grain as material growth and
suggests that any
literary/artistic achievement is the
result of previous "readings."

In the end, I understand
collaboration to be concerned with
participation, which in turn
involves changes that take place
in developing a new space.