Stephanie Leonard is a self- taught artist who begun drawing and painting when her life was drastically altered upon finding out that her 5 year old daughter had cancer. She was born in Peru, South America and lived there for 13 years; much of the picturesque but also tragically impoverish culture and surrounding visual arts to depict this environment had a lasting impact in her always creative mind. She grew up in Southern CA, in Rancho Palos Verdes, and graduated from the California University of Long Beach emphasizing on Psychology and Biology in hopes to pursue neurosurgery, but, with her daughter’s illness she was veered in this artistic journey. Once she begun sketching her in the confines of the hospital room a calming solace prevailed and a certainty, that ART was the path she was destined to follow.
In her work, commissioned pieces were the first building blocks in finding that painting had taken a strong role; her particular mediums of use are oils, acrylics and watercolors. She is drawn to detail with focal crisp points of light and dark values and vibrancy of specific situations depicted in her landscapes and representation of human figures. She has shown her work in diverse areas of Southern California, online and through public artworks. She has attended the Post Baccalaureate Certificate program at The Laguna College of Art and Design in Laguna Beach, CA and will begin a Master of Fine Art program in Painting there as well come Fall of 2014.

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