Today we’d like to introduce you to Harper Leich.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
A lifelong art lover, I graduated from Denison University with a degree in art. After graduation, I moved to Philadelphia for an internship with the mural arts program there. At the end of that summer, I moved to Asheville and have been here 21 years. I was fortunate to work on a huge mural project in downtown Asheville around 2009 where a group of artists worked together to paint the first large scale collaborate mural in town. It’s also how I also met my partner, Kurt. We fell in love painting together up on the scaffolding under the 240 bridge, and we now have a wonderful daughter.
I haven’t worked on murals in years and much prefer working in the quiet of a studio on a canvas.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The terrain of my creative journey is always changing, but the constant is my need to create. I’ll go through spells where I won’t paint for many months, but I find creative outlets in other ways- sewing, gardening, embroidery, drawing in my sketchbook, etc. I always find my way back to painting.
For most of my adult life, I have worked a day job and made paintings in my free time. After having my daughter, I quit work to stay home with her. I had much less energy and smaller windows of time, so I started painting small, quick oil paintings of birds. Instead of my usual larger scale oil paintings that took weeks to complete, these could be finished in an hour or two. These small works were stress free to make, helped me to loosen in my painting style, and were affordable for buyers (my friends and family at first!).
Two friends and I had been renting our studio and classroom space in Riverview Station for only 9 months when the flood hit. The muddy water reached over 3 feet high in our second floor studio. By the time we were able to get back in, pretty much everything was lost to water damage and mold. A lifetime’s collection of art materials and furnishings had to be dragged out and thrown onto a 2 story pile of rubble. Thankfully, most of my paintings were high enough that they stayed out of the muddy water.
The flood was devastating to our area and it’s hard to quantify the grief and trauma that our community experienced. Despite having lost so much, I saw first hand that it could have been much worse as countless people lost their homes and many people died. Our economy stood still, as it is largely tourism based, and many people lost their jobs or were facing eviction. We didn’t know what the future looked like, if recovery was even possible.
The destruction of my art materials and my art community felt like an insurmountable loss. And it was secondary to just getting through the ordeal of our daily life with no running water or school for over a month, seeing our city so devastated, and still wanting to help others in the community who were struggling. Art supplies are expensive and it wasn’t possible for me to buy what I needed to work again. I didn’t even have the desire to create anything.
Somewhere in the fog of the aftermath, I started going to the River Arts District Association (RADA) meetings, which opened up to non-members after the flood. The weekly meetings were held outside of an undamaged studio building on higher ground. They would serve us hot meals, keep our hope alive, and talk about how they were working to find and create grants to help us rebuild. And they did. Through grants, a Go-Fund-Me started by my dad, and a huge boost in sales from RADFest that winter (it felt like the whole city came out to buy art!), I was able to restock my supplies.
It took many months to find the focus and desire to make art again, but eventually it came back. I was even able to rent a temporary studio for a few months where I met wonderful people and was able to sell work directly to collectors. I started making giclee prints of my work for the firs time and learned how to vend at art markets. I’ve gotten to know so many talented artists who are also figuring out how to rebuild and we continue to lift each other up and keep working.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m an oil painter who dabbles in pretty much every creative art form there is. I do custom paintings of people, places, and pets, and have become known for my small oil paintings of regional birds.
I absolutely love portraiture and continue to work through a series of large paintings, each of which tells the story about a person’s experience of a plant. I asked friends who were interested in flower essences or just really loved plants to visually illustrate how a particular plant has influenced their life. We would collaborate on what they wanted to express, then I would photograph them and adjust the composition and design before making paintings of them.
Last year, I participated in my first artist residency (Cuttyhunk Island Artist Residency) where I learned how to paint en plein air and am loving learning how to paint landscapes from direct observation.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I remember taking after school art classes at the little art museum in the small Wisconsin town I lived in when I was young. I brought in a book about Georgia O’Keeffe to show the teacher so we could talk about my favorite painter. I was in first grade.
Like my own kid now, I was an only child who was great at entertaining myself. Both of my grandmothers and my mom were very creative and talented in many different ways. They each taught me a lot, be it knitting, crafts of any and all kind, or learning how to really observe what I was trying to draw. My mom is a very talented stained glass artist and I have many of her calligraphy pieces hanging in our home. Although my dad isn’t an artist, his love of music and reading was passed on to me, if not his abilities at math.
I was shy, sensitive, and generally described as an old soul. I loved animals and volunteered at the local Humane Society as a middle schooler.
Some of my high school friend called me Martha Stewart for my love of crafting.
I’ve always been a bit of an old lady, even when I was a kid.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://HarperLeich.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harperleich_art
