Featured Artist Leanne Hamilton

Artist Leanne Hamilton’s paintings are alive with the beauty and flowing gracefulness of undersea flora and fauna. Visit her website to see more.

 

 

In my Abundance series I am focusing on the opulence of nature—the outrageous beauty in color and texture of the natural underwater world. For this series, I drew my inspiration from our local aquarium, but also from my outdoor goldfish pond. The compositions are about movement and flow of fish, water and sometimes kelp.

 

 

The feng shui principle of flow and movement, as opposed to stagnation, is thought to encourage abundance energies to be drawn into your space, and I felt this connection with the fish. Previous bodies of work have focused on birds in flight, balloons or butterflies.

 

 

My interests vary with time, and without warning. I find I change subject and interest or come back to a familiar subject in a new way. I have, however, always preferred the natural world in its various forms as my starting point. I derive great energy from nature; it is a constant, daily source of rejuvenation and inspiration for me.

 

 

Having said that, I do not paint directly from life as I once did. I now prefer to construct my own reality with little attempt to paint it as it is.

 

 

I use my own photographic reference material (often a handful of photographs from the same or unrelated scenes) to assemble an image to my liking. I construct my painting to express the energy I am trying to convey. I often incorporate floating subjects, such as birds soaring over a landscape, butterflies leaving a tree en masse, or a cluster of balloons approaching the sun. These are things I construct into my interpreted reality.

 

 

I create my Abundance series on large square or vertically orientated canvases, 5 feet high by 3 feet wide. This is a common landscape orientation in many eastern cultures, and it allows me to create a sense of depth by keeping the lower half of the canvas dark and the upper half light, like sunlight hitting the top of the water. I focus on the play of light and how the colors change with light. The brushwork is alla prima as this gives it great energy and visual interest close up as well as compositional impact from afar.

 

 

My initial inspiration and creative drive come from my meditations and spiritual life. I have come to see the various floating or swimming elements in my work as often representing the energy signature of a landscape, or the feeling I have about it. I do not just paint a series of rolling hills to view, but also the soaring birds above it. The birds convey the uplifting feeling, the healing or an impending change as the case may be. In my Abundance series the smooth sailing fish in their beautifully abundant environment make me feel serene and beautifully cared for. It’s my hope that these energies are expressed to the viewer and that they can experience it, too.

 

Artist Leanne Hamilton invites you to follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

 

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