My work offers a restful visual space—familiar, soothing, and filled with light. ·
LeeAnne
Chappell
Original Fine Art Catalog
Available Artwork
“LeeAnne Chappell is a Sausalito landscape painter who studied under Wayne Thiebaud at UC Davis. Painting outdoors in oil, she captures the light, coastal hills and oaks of Northern California in luminous, playful color.”
— LeeAnne Chappell
The Process
Inside the Studio
The Painting Process
LeeAnne Chappell paints in oils, and most of her work begins outdoors. Working en plein air, usually on a square canvas, she sets up on a trail, a ridge or a creek bank in Marin, Sonoma or Point Reyes and paints directly from the scene in front of her eyes. She believes her paintings are more activated when they are made on location. Outdoors, everything takes part in the painting at once: wind, bright sun or rolling fog, floating bugs, the sounds around her. Nature never holds still, and the light can change in minutes. That constant change reminds her as she paints to stay fluid, flexible and ready to adapt. Her palette is deliberately limited to a few bright colors, and she never uses black. Instead she often lets the transparency of the canvas show through, so light seems to come from within the painting. Playful brushwork keeps the surface lively, and the result feels both ethereal and grounded. Her subjects are the places she knows well: coastal hills, majestic oaks, eucalyptus reflected in a still pond, egrets gathering on the San Pablo Bay shoreline, and paths that wind out of sight. Back in her studio at the ICB building in Sausalito she develops ideas further, including larger works and her more whimsical paintings of birds, rabbits, cats and dogs at play. Through it all she aims to create a restful visual space, familiar, soothing and filled with light, that honors the spirit we share with the natural world.