ARTIST & WRITER
Leah began her fine art career in 2011 with a series of sumi ink Intention Poem paintings incorporating 書道 (Shodou - Japanese calligraphy), 短歌 (Tanka) poetry and 霊気 (Reiki) energy work. Soon she moved on to Energetic Portraits, creating acupuncture portraits. Both series became a source of commissions and she participated in her first group show with EMERGED LA at the Venice Art Crawl in 2012.
From there she delved into her fascination with systems, working on a Calligraphic Art series based on the chakras. Having become fascinated with encaustic artwork through the mentorship of Los Angeles artist Alissa Warshaw , Leah began working in the wax medium. In time for her first solo show at Sol Salon in 2013, she completed four encaustic series: Go To the Turtle, The Hills, Encaustic Energy Portraits and Clouds.
At this point Leah began selling her work in galleries, and through Wallspace LA her paintings began appearing in TV series and commercials.
In 2016, Leah became chronically ill and became unable to pursue her art career at the same pace. During that period she moved to watercolour and to this day continues producing Sumi Ink Landscapes.
Upon recovery, over eight years later, Leah is getting back to artist self, exploring her chronic illness and overlapping move into perimenopause in the active series Cronotron. It is the first time is she working in the medium of fabric, a long-time area of expertise and passion. In the last few months she has began a new series of studies, Ukon, a shadow self inspired by a crack in the wall of her apartment.
BIOGRAPHY
Leah Richmond Cooper was born to a British father and an American mother in 1977 West Germany. At the age of four she moved with her brother and parents to New South Wales, where she spent the next 12 years living amidst the unique flora, fauna, and culture of Australia. Then, as she neared 16, her family made the move to San Antonio, Texas to be near her grandparents, where she completed high school with Honours in Japanese Language. She attended Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana where she won several awards for her English Literature essays, but ultimately chose Japanese Studies as her major and lived in Tokyo to study at Waseda University under the prestigious Japan Study program.
Leah then spent ten years in Boston where she developed her vocation as a polymath, occupying herself as a shop girl, interior design assistant, office manager, bookkeeper, ESL tutor, cultural consultant, writer and (mostly drum'n'bass) DJ photographer. At the end of 2009 Leah worked on her first feature film as a still photographer before moving to her current home of Los Angeles where she now paints in sumi ink and encaustics, works on personal and collaborative writing projects, takes part in awesome masterminds, and practices energy work in the areas of healing and Feng Shui.
Leah, by necessity, has experienced perspective shifts from a young age. As a result of having no physical location to ultimately call home-sweet-home, she has the attitude that one can create home anywhere. She is a perpetual observer and participant with a thirst for new, interesting, and aesthetically juxtaposed sights and sounds. Her father, David Richmond Cooper, was an artist, and influenced Leah to appreciate and seek out beauty.
Her art and writing are both heavily influenced by her 20 years of studies in Japanese language and culture, mixed with a heavy dose of calligraphic and classic literature studies. Illuminated texts and illustrated stories (such as those by May Gibbs and Norman Lindsay) are extremely influential for her. Along these lines, Leah is currently working on an illustrated novel, "Ukiyo", about a misanthropic foreign girl who has ghostly and existential adventures in Tokyo, Japan.
