Davette Leonard rolled into Little Washington from Wisconsin last week, her KIA Soul stuffed with art, all new, all oils (except for a solitary egg tempera), all still lifes, all glowing with the signature luminescent colors reminiscent of the Old Masters.
“I’ve been steadily painting since October when Jay Brown called and asked about a show at his Gay Street Gallery. I said, ‘Sure, I can do 20 paintings by the end of July’ … I finished three over the holidays and 17 since January,” she said, with a satisfied smile and a loud, “ Whew!”
Leonard acknowledged “a real push to be productive,” but she was clear that the deadline was a blessing. “Never was it, ‘Oh no! Not another one!’ Instead, it’s been, ‘Oh joy, now I get to do another painting!’ I’ve loved having a reason to keep working at what I love.”
It’s a full circle thing. The show that opens Aug. 8 at Gay Street Gallery in the Town of Washington has brought her back to Rappahannock where she first found artistic inspiration 46 years ago.
For a lifetime, the muse has whispered in Leonard’s ear and guided her imagination and her hand. As a young artist, she was as tied to pencil and paper as today’s kids are to their cellphones and tablets, and from the beginning, she drew from life and her imagination.
Leonard grew up in New York City and Washington, D.C., haunting the museums and galleries in both cities. “I could stand before a single painting for hours, studying, deconstructing, analyzing different perspectives and imagining the art’s creation. That’s where I learned technique. I went to the best,” she said.
Living with her father in Washington, D.C., she took classes at what’s now called the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design and wandered the museums and galleries of the capital city. Back in New York, she studied painting at the School of Visual Arts. There, too, the museum collections remained her most influential teachers as she explored avant-garde, non-objective painting and other contemporary forms.
Eventually, she landed in Rappahannock on a house-painting job when she was in her late 20s. Leonard looked around and loved what she saw — it wasn’t urban or suburban but real rural countryside. “It was like stepping into a painting,” she said, and she settled in the Blue Ridge foothills of Rappahannock County.
She drew, she painted, she raised three daughters, mastered calligraphy, taught art, returned to school to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, and later opened her home gallery in Sperryville.
In 2023, Leonard moved to Waupaca, Wis., to be closer to her daughter Kelli and her two children.
“It’s a lovely little town that puts a huge effort into the arts,” she said. “And I’m having a wonderful time in this lively arts community I’ve fallen into.”
Leonard’s on the Waupaca Community Arts Board and a member of the Waupaca Arts HUB, where she teaches painting and drawing for children and adults. A new approach is her continuing series for “serious students,” ages 8-15, who want to keep on learning and building their skills.
“I’m following the music lesson model, guiding young people to keep on studying, learning and growing until they get where they want to be, artistically,” she said.
She has continued to work in oil with a focus on natural objects. Her trademark remains the luminous color created by thin layer upon thin layer of paint that echoes the richness and intensity of European Renaissance and Spanish Baroque paintings. But her subjects are still bits of nature.
“I never get tired of nature and the beauty of it all. But now that I’m older, I’m more interested in the old and dead side of nature,” she said with a laugh, pointing to the withered vines that creep gracefully across her paintings, the lost feathers, the dry twigs of birds’ nests and the eggs nestled inside the nests.
The most striking differences are the captivating hues — deep blues, lemon yellows, along with subdued earth tones and rich reds — that give Leonard’s new work the dimension and the shine of internal light.
While the paintings done for the Gay Street Gallery’s show are still lifes from nature, Leonard is also exploring landscapes, abstracts and birds of prey. She has upcoming shows in Wisconsin — a lively local event later this month that will include her prints, cards and calligraphy and Waupaca’s annual Hidden Studios Tour for which she will again be “painting like crazy” to create timeless art that reflects nature.
“I found my mature style in Rappahannock, and it continues to bring me joy,” she said. “My new paintings are the same style, just a little more perfected, a little closer to my vision. I’m just getting better at what I do.”
Daphne Hutchinson is a contributing reporter for the Rappahannock News and Foothills Forum , a nonprofit organization that supports local news in Rappahannock County.
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