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Leeper paintings capture local beauty
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Neighbors | Grace Wyler .Local artist Christopher Leeper works on a landscape painting in his Canfield studio. Leeper's work will be exhibited at the Zanesville Art Center until Apr. 17.
By GRACE WYLER
gwyler@vindy.com
For the past decade, local artist Christopher Leeper has captured the natural beauty of the Northeast Ohio landscape from his painter’s studio in Canfield.
Leeper, the president of the Ohio Watercolor Society, is one of the state’s leading artists, best known for his watermedia paintings of wetlands and rural farm country.
“Christopher Leeper’s paintings set a standard for contemporary watermedia in Ohio,” said Susan Talbot-Stanaway, the director of the Zanesville Art Center, where Leeper’s work will be on display until Apr. 17.
Leeper gets his creative influence from light and shadows.
“My paintings are usually about some kind of lighting effects,” Leeper said. “I find something interesting about the light. That’s what inspires me.”
The way Leeper captures the everyday beauty of natural lighting is part of what makes his landscapes expressive.
“He glazes each element of the scene with the clear, cool light of a winter morning, or the golden hues of an autumn afternoon,” Talbot-Stanaway said. “This use of light is particularly evocative and the viewer becomes drawn into the moment.”
A western Pennsylvania native, Leeper, 44, has worked in the region for many years. He graduated from Youngstown State University in 1988 with a degree in graphic design and is a member of the adjunct faculty in the university’s art department.
Since 2000, Leeper has worked full-time from his studio in Canfield, where he lives with his wife, Kathy, and their two sons, Jack, 5, and Brian, 4.
Leeper’s work has evolved over the past five years, as he has moved away from the tight, photorealism of his earlier work and adopted a more “painterly” style, he said.
“Now that I have two little boys, my time is much more compressed — I used to paint all day,” he said. “It just feels right now, this new style of painting more loosely.”
He has also begun to paint more portraits, he said.
“I never really painted portraits before,” Leeper said. “[My kids] are probably my favorite subject now.”
Although Leeper is best known for his watermedia landscapes, he works in all paint media and has illustrated four children’s books.
Leeper will display his illustrations and give a painting demonstration at Fellows Riverside Gardens’ “Plant the Seed to Read” Children’s Book Fair today at 11:30 a.m.