The much-anticipated Emily Leonard solo exhibition 2024 will be held from October 30 to December 23 at Winston Wächter Fine Art in Seattle. For her second solo show with the gallery, Leonard brings a new series of works reflecting her evolving artistic vision. In an abstract landscape and wildflowers with a burst of desert flora inspired by her life in New Mexico, Leonard’s art in 2024 offers viewers an eye journey through abstractions that have become a commonality of her daily life. This approach to painting offers new techniques blended with natural high desert beauty and a new perspective on art.
Understory: A New Chapter in Emily Leonard’s Artistic Evolution
The Understory painting series shall form the core of Leonard’s solo exhibition, truly mirroring the New Mexico desert. Leonard has spent five years working within the landscape of the New Mexico desert and its wildflowers and grasses, a body of work focusing on those very layers that remain unseen – vistas that expand into views beneath expanses of desert. While Leonard has done much work depicting more abstracted flora in previous paintings, this newer series gives a deeper look into the Earth. The Understory series is a more substantial reflection of her experience regarding desert flora and the great, intense colors of Earth of the desert.
Photography and Pandemic Rituals in Leonard’s Artistic Process
So many experiences that make up her practice have been pandemic-rite-of-passage. At the earliest stages of the world in lockdown, Leonard began long walking, photographing sandy brows and red glimmer on her New Mexico desert journeys, a series of paintings created out of inspiration through these photographic shots that capture all very loose moments and impressions that just came under her attention. Leonard’s walks in the early stages have been a form of contact with the outside world when alone; such contact directly impacts her art in 2024.
What makes these paintings interesting is Leonard’s use of smartphone camera proportions to shape her compositions. Long used in her work to complicate the notion of perception and capture fleeting, momentary views, the smartphone camera proportions are now an integral part of her artwork as an analogy for the transience of human attention, technology wedded to nature in an unlikely harmony.
Sun-Stained and Spectral: Leonard’s Vibrant Desert Landscapes
What stands out for one’s eye is Leonard’s sun-stained desert paintings. They bear with them the distinct quality of intense light and warm intensity. Those painted scenes shine like a specter as if they were presented with such glorious warmth of light that they do everything around her landscape scene. Light-and-dark patterns dance upon this body with that dream-like feel for images ephemeral. Often, the photos appear like snapshots in time, and they are used to grasp an impression of the desert landscapes and life that stir noiselessly in them. All of the artwork serves to make an invitation to linger over the desert landscape and soak up the desert in the same way it comes to mirror Leonard’s footsteps over the land.
Emily Leonard’s Growing Impact on Contemporary Art
In addition to her solo show at Winston Wächter Fine Art, Emily Leonard is rapidly becoming one of the most significant names in contemporary art. Born in Nashville, this artist has generated much noise over innovative approaches to abstract landscapes and has even been featured in major publications such as Garden and Gun and Southern Living. Leonard’s work is in many public and private collections here and abroad, such as the Tennessee State Museum and Swedish Hospital, Seattle. Because she can mix such personal experiences with a more affluent cultural background, collectors and art lovers will be attracted to her for being one of her generation’s most stimulating contemporary artists.
Visit Emily Leonard’s Solo Exhibition in Seattle
For those eager to see the beauty and depth of Emily Leonard’s work in 2024, the solo exhibition will be on view from December 23, 2024, at Winston Wächter Fine Art. This gallery in the heart of Seattle is a great setting to present Leonard’s new work. Whether you are an art lover or someone who finds beauty in landscapes, Leonard’s vivid desert landscapes in New Mexico will indeed create an experience that is both aesthetically pleasing and emotional.
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