The First Light Collection

In college, Leat covered the studio walls with ten-foot canvases, painting vast abstractions of what we cannot see with our eyes. Backing up from the trance of painting one day, she bumped into her professor, who must have been watching her for a while. He studied the canvas for a long moment, then said, almost in a whisper: "This is too easy for you." She was young; she heard it as a verdict against abstraction, and spent the next thirty years challenging herself to paint in realistic form — perfecting her craft without surrendering the movement and the intensity of emotion.

With this series, she turns back toward the energy and transparency of what we might sense beyond our senses, and accept beyond our minds.

The First Light Collection is that return. For Leat, angels are not a religious symbol so much as a promise. There are so many things we cannot see with our eyes. So why not take a moment, while looking at these paintings, and ask yourself: What if… What if, all around us, there is light and energy that protects. What if — we are not alone.