Lucia deLeiris’ love of art began during early childhood. As a youngster, she accompanied her parents, both avid painters, on excursions to do watercolors by the seashore in Rhode Island. Throughout school years, she would go to the zoo with her father to spend the day sketching animals. “We both filled folders full of zoo drawings, and I learned so much in the process about animals, drawing, and how to work with moving subjects. It was challenging, but so much fun!” she recalls. deLeiris comes from four generations of painters, and grew up in a house full of paintings and art books. Her French grandmother worked as a professional portrait artist both in France and New England. deLeiris reveled in watching her grandmother paint. “I loved drawing and painting.” she remembers. “My whole family was supportive of my interest in art.”

Part of her artistic development came from working at a bird sanctuary during high school summers. There, she did drawings for the museum, cared for young or wounded animals that were brought in, learned bird banding and museum taxidermy. During her last summer there she was prompted to illustrate a trail guide in pen and ink. “It was a revelation to me to see my drawings in a book.” she notes. “I had always illustrated my school book reports, and scribbled drawings in my school notes, but I had never before thought about working as an artist.”

Later, when attending the University of Maryland where she studied zoology, she took some chopped up photocopies of the trail guide drawings in a manila folder (her first attempt at a portfolio), and walked into the office of the National Parks and Conservation Association in Washington, DC. There she picked up an illustration job drawing grizzly bears for their magazine. That prompted further illustration jobs for several natural history magazines in the DC area.

Her career took off upon graduating from University, when she was granted a residency at the Smithsonian National Zoo Conservation Center in Front Royal Virginia. She lived there six months sketching and observing Père David Deer from a jeep for a scientific study, and then illustrating the resulting book. Living among the semi captive animals, she was able to combine her interests in art and biology. When a documentary film crew arrived, she did a painting of golden lion marmosets for the film introduction. Of sketching in their enclosure, she remembers, “One of the tiny monkeys climbed down my arm while I was drawing, to play with my pencil eraser!”

After working with drawing media and watercolor, deLeiris took up oil painting. She appreciates its workability as well as the sculptural qualities of the brushstrokes. She devised a lightweight set up that could be carried anywhere, and participated in juried plein air festivals around the country for several years, enjoying the challenge of painting varying landscapes. To this day, she does both oil and watercolor. “I love watercolor for the transparency and spontaneity it provides,” she says, “and its way of spreading pigment as it dries in sometimes unpredictable ways. “There is magic in that medium!”

After University years, she continued to learn and further develop her style, taking workshops with several artists. Prominent painter, Katriel Srebnik was instrumental in guiding her progression from detailed illustration to the more impressionistic realism she now employs in her painting style today. From the renowned marine artist, Don Demers, she honed her ability to convey luminosity and atmosphere. Later, studying with two prominent watercolorists, Tom Schaller, and Eudes Correia, influenced how she handles watercolor, both in figures and animals. When asked about influences from the old masters, she notes Rembrandt and John Singer Sargent, whose conveyance of mood, and skillful use of the brush have been an ongoing inspiration.

World travel expanded her scope of subjects. The most life changing  experience was when she was granted a residency at a science station in Antarctica for four months. There, she illustrated the book, “Natural History of the Antarctic Peninsula,” (Moss) and painted landscapes and wildlife. “I would take a small inflatable zodiac through the floating sea ice to one of the small islands and spend the day sketching Adelie penguins, terns, gulls, and elephant seals. It was so heavenly!”

In the following years, she was awarded two more Antarctic residencies. One involved living in a fish hut on the frozen ocean. she recalls, ”In the middle of the night I would awake hearing seals swimming underneath me… surprised, in my drowsy state, that my hut was not sitting on terra firma!” From that remote field camp on the sea ice, she explored and painted in the light cast by the low sun that circled the southern sky as the spring season progressed.

As soon as it had warmed to minus 20º Fahrenheit, animals began to appear on the barren sea ice. Through layers of thick gloves, she sketched the emperor penguins that waddled in from the open ocean to mingle at the camp for four hours, one evening. She sketched the weddell seals as they emerged from cracks in the sea ice to give birth to wet pups on the sea ice. Observing the progression Antarctic spring for two exciting months at the field camp, she produced drawings, pastels and took notes as reference for later studio paintings.

From her book collaborations and solo exhibitions that resulted, deLeiris was awarded the Antarctic Service Medal presented on behalf of the National Science Foundation 2005.

Many of the paintings sold through galleries, solo exhibitions at Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, at the Harvard Museum in Cambridge, MA, at Newport Art Museum in RI, and many other venues. She continues to sell paintings through Argosy Gallery in Maine, Sheldon Fine Art Gallery in Newport, RI, and Sloane Merrill Gallery in Boston, MA.

Another artistic exploration in her life involved two extended stays in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park in Tanzania, where wild chimpanzees have been the focus of primatologist, Jane Goodall’s long term study. In Boston, deLeiris met her childhood hero, whose work she had followed for many years. Invited to stay at Goodall’s primitive house on Lake Tanganyika, with an oil lamp for light, no running water, and visits of baboons and chimps on the front porch, she went on forest forays to observe and sketch the wild chimpanzees. This extended focus in exploring this African forest, doing watercolors and sketching the chimps, vines, insects, palm trees, and birds, combined all her passions: painting, field drawing, travel, and exploration of a natural environment.

deLeiris has traveled widely with her sketch journal and watercolors. She is moved by the variety and richness of landscapes and cultures around the world. With her watercolors, she camped in Micronesia, in a jungle hammock on the Amazon River bank, wandered throughout South America, Fiji, Japan, Greenland and Svalbard, and Europe. She had several positions as artist in residence of small cruising ships, painting and exhibiting on board, along the west coast of Africa, in several parts of the Arctic and Antarctica.

On the one of several cruises to the geographic North Pole, she had a few hours to paint on the Russian Islands of Franz Josef Land. There she discovered a love of painting the wildflowers growing on the Arctic tundra, spots of delicate color in a barren landscape. After several of these fleeting visits, she returned to the Arctic on her own to spend several weeks at a time, painting the tundra flowers. Of her stays in Greenland and in Svalbard, she notes, “Exploring the tundra with my watercolors was a delight,” she notes. “I could observe the plants up close, watching for the various pollinators, contemplating the various ways these plants adapted to their harsh environment, and painting their delicate forms, while exploring the tundra.”

When not on the road, deLeiris’ works out of a studio in the Boston area. Recent work in her native New England reveals much about her life and passions. Sometimes she goes out to capture the Old World feeling of the quaint streets of Boston. She attends figure drawing sessions, and sketches people in cafes. “I draw any subject, whenever I have a moment, wherever I happen to be… in a cafe, in a parking space, waiting in an airport.

Venturing out throughout the year to capture the light of each season can be a challenge. Sometimes the weather interferes bringing high winds or driving rain, but on days when the wind is calm, bundling up in winter presents the opportunity to capture the pristine beauty of snowy landscapes. deLeiris’ sensitive balance of color reveals the beauty she sees around her. Her paintings invite the viewer to find a respite in a world often filled with the bustle of day to day activities.

During other seasons, farm scenes with grazing animals, landscapes, seascapes with seabirds reflected at low tide, all express the beauty of the natural settings. Since her childhood was spent painting only outdoors, deLeiris took years to learn to appreciate painting in a studio. But it led to her interest in figurative painting. The human figure presented new challenges and she finds it a good way to keep her practice up throughout the year no matter what the weather brings. She finds that figures of any kind, feathered, furred, scaled, or not, are always a delightful challenge.