"Understory" Opening Reception

Opening Reception: Sat, Nov 9  from 4-6pm
Exhibition Run: Oct 30-Dec 23, 2024

The first series of paintings directly inspired by Leonard’s experience in New Mexico, where she has lived for the last five years, Understory explores not the distant vistas and mesas of the high desert, but the ground itself, encumbered with wildflowers and grasses. Leonard’s compositions have historically centered abstracted flora— flurried petals brimming with color— yet here they more directly engage the earth, as one might glimpse passing patches off a trail on an evening saunter.

Indeed, Leonard’s vibrant impressions of the world literally at her feet stem from an early pandemic ritual of taking long walks, photographing the sandy browns and glimmers of red in the flora and desert earth. Oftentimes sharing these photos through her Instagram stories, Leonard began critically engaging with our fleeting attention, comparing the wandering eye scanning a landscape to our shared digital impressions. The sun-stained paintings in Understory all use the same proportions that mimic smart phone cameras, complicating notions of the actual act of seeing. Leonard invites the viewer into her spectral, momentarily captured records of the world below her, teeming with life and beauty, quietly growing into focus.