This painting comprises objects that I am personally drawn towards. I like to combine them in such a way as to create a sense of mystery and inward questioning.
The glass object is always an interesting addition in the still life due to the abstraction and distortion that it creates within itself in the painting and to the surrounding objects. This makes me think about our perceptions as individuals and how we can perceive things so differently depending on surrounding circumstances, environment and our own social conditioning compared to other people's perceptions of the same thing.
Although I paint from life and rely on a certain set up of lighting to create the shadows and effects that I want, to me the painting represents an inner personal landscape that is at once very intimate and yet as impersonal as objects can be. I may be painting a representation of objects in the outer world, but to me this kind of painting is an exploration of my inner world that is nebulous, silent, ever changing, fully charged with feelings that words cannot describe.
Leonie is mainly a painter of still life in the tradition of tonal realism. She also loves painting abstract works, and drawing and painting en plein air.
She started painting in Paris some 30 years ago where she studied the flute after graduating from the NSW Conservatorium of Music in Flute. She was encouraged by artist friends to whom she taught music to continue her painting journey and was also mentored by them. On returning to Sydney, Leonie took up many art classes such as life drawing, watercolour painting, oil painting and then enrolled at TAFE in Seaforth NSW where she continued in a drawing and painting course.
Leonie was drawn to the art works of students of the tonal realism school in Melbourne, who in their lifetimes studied from artists who were students of Max Meldrum and his pupils. She studied this method of painting with Don James, one of the painters in this lineage of painting going back to Meldrum.
Leonie has been exhibiting since 2001 in group shows and has also had several solo shows at various galleries in Sydney and Melbourne.
