About Leah
More than anything, I simply offer good intentions to the world through my work. As a painter, I take the tactile visual experiences that excite me (often textures, color combinations, animal figures...) and I use them to dream up ideas that I've never seen before that lead me to wonder and sometimes, laugh.
I grew up in a small town in Southeastern Minnesota where there were not many artistic opportunities. I have not had much formal training in painting, but art has always been my passion. Drawing was my focus in high school, and my art teacher encouraged me to go to the college that he went to. I graduated with a major in Philosophy and a major in Fine Art with an emphasis in sculpture and ceramics from Coe College in 2005. After graduating, I ended up returning to drawing independently and began to use colored pencils to draw animals from photographs and learned to work with color. Eventually I switched to oil paint. Eventually I decided I wanted to make detailed paintings that resembled the imaginative subject matter of children's book illustrations. I began sharing that work at art fairs in 2015.
I've participated in prestigious fairs such as Scottsdale's Celebration of Fine Art, the Arizona Art Expo, and the Beverly Hills Art Show. My work has been published in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, and Creative Quarterly. It has also been juried in as a finalist in competitive exhibitions such as NOAPS best in America, and the Art Renewal Center's (ARC) Salon. My original artwork is collected by people with a sense of humor and appreciation for fine details all across the United States and prints and books have been sent to collectors throughout the world.
