Leanne Larson
AI am an Aussie living in the USA (Minnesota) with my husband, and 3 beautiful children. We have been living in and remodeling an old school house for the last 16 years! (It’s almost done)
I met my husband, Jerry, on the east coast back in 2001 while traveling. We Married in 2004
After receiving a BA in Studio Art from the University of Minnesota, Morris, I had the drive + determination to make Art not just my career but my lifestyle.
As an Artist, I primarily paint live at weddings - capturing the event as it happens!
My Style has evolved into a soft and impressionistic approach. I freely capture the energy and mood of each event by utilizing color, lights plus fast paint techniques. I love to share my painting process as I connect with spectators and guests. By the end of each event I paint at, I will have a finished masterpiece to be cherished forever.
In addition to Painting Live at Weddings, I stay busy with commissioned paintings and teaching classes. I offer custom Portraits, Landscapes, Pets, and Abstracts.
In the Summer of 2014, I founded Art Bar 39 LLC --a creative events company--based out of Alexandria, MN. Art Bar 39 is now a hip little Studio/Wine Bar & Cafe and offers social painting and craft events both in studio and traveling parties.
I successfully sold this business in June of 2020 to allow a stronger focus on my live wedding paintings and allow time for other opportunities as they arise.
When time permits, I continue to build my ongoing series I call Recollections. Recollections is a visual biography about my own experiences and feelings of my past and how I relate them in the present. My work is collected in both public and private collections in Arizona, Australia, throughout the Midwest and in two public collections at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
When I am not painting, teaching or creating, I am spending time with my Family. I love the outdoors, wilderness camping, traveling and beach trips. Summers here in MN are short so we are outside as much as possible.
I propose painting a bench to honor the late Justine Kerfoot
Kerfoot was the sole author of two published books, co-authored a third, and created the foreword for a fourth:
Woman Of The Boundary Waters
● Woman Of The Boundary Waters: Canoeing, Guiding, Mushing, and Surviving (Minnesota) Paperback – April 15, 1994 [
Gunflint Reflections on the Trail
● Gunflint Reflections on the Trail
Other
● A life in Two Worlds 1996, co-authored
● The Gunflint Lodge Cookbook: Elegant Northwoods Dining 1997, wrote the foreword and provided some recipes
She wrote a “On the Gunflint Trail” column that ran weekly for 42 years in the Cook County News Herald.
I plan on painting a portrait of Kerfoot in the sky on the front top left of the bench. This portrait will honor her courage as a woman living in the wilderness, her
endeavours, knowledge, and friendships developed with native peoples. The remainder of the top face of the bench will be a boundary waters treeline, the gunflint lodge, (in which Keftoots family lived in and ran after the great depression), a sunset sky with a moon and a portion of the lake.
The seat area of the bench will be continued down from the trees and lake, waters edge rocks, a campfire and most importantly, Kefoots famous canoe.
The front edge of the book will be the earth exposed with roots going down into the earth to symbolize Kerfoots deep ties to the BWCA and gunflint trail.
The south sides will be underwater scenes and the north sides and top will be grasses and rocks. The top edge will be sky and possibly a quote from Kerfoots Book, The Woman of the Boundary Waters.
The very back of the bench will be a full winter scene of the boundary waters with a soft winter sunset, trees in the mist, snow banks and a partially frozen lake.
My intention is to capture the barron and vast wilderness Kerfoot faced - many times alone. I will portray her portaging a canoe in the distance. Kefoot portaged a canoe until she was 90 years old!
