Deborah’s love of nature, through observation and academic study has a strong influence on her painting. She finds enjoyment, interest, and beauty in her surroundings. In the more traditional pieces, atmospheric conditions and varied brush strokes are used to express the subject matter. She often prefers to emphasize the simple elegance of a single tree or a forgotten barn. Her work captures the light and mood of the soft meadows or misty ocean for a particular day, turning her canvas into a diary.
Using acrylics as her medium, she enjoys plein air painting as well as studio work. She is past president of Avon Arts Association and past vice president of the Connecticut Plein Air Painters Society. She is a founding member of Simsbury Open Studios. She was also co-founder of the Farmington Valley’s City and Country Canvases event. She has held leadership positions in many local art groups and has done much to promote the arts in her community and beyond. She teaches at the Farmington Valley Arts Center and she continues to teach art at the Simsbury community center as she has for eighteen years.
Her work has won awards and appeared in numerous juried shows. She is dedicated to preserving the Connecticut farmland and watershed areas that are the subjects of so many of her paintings. Working with various like minded groups, she donates her art work and service to protect and educate.
Featured Collection
Artist Statement
I create for me. My work is all about my reaction to what I see and feel. It expresses what’s of interest to me. I enjoy responding to the world around me with paint and canvas. The colors as well content and composition are born of my immediate dialog and perception.
I am delighted if the viewer enjoys what they see. If a feeling, or momentary sense of “transfixedness” occurs, all the better. We’ve made a connection! And that is the very best outcome that I could hope for a piece. It’s taken a while to truly become my mantra, but the saying, “Court not the critic’s smile, nor dread his frown” is the way I paint or write.
So I offer my colorful musings, a glimpse of how I interact with the world, and possibly they will strike a chord with you, but I paint for me.
Deborah Leonard
Work in Progress
Something New
Public Art
