Essay by Jonathan Goodman

Hector Leonardi's works are filled with a passionate love of painting. His unusual skill as an abstract painter owes its evocative force to his command of color.

His palette can range from pastels to the somber; no matter what the hue is, however, he communicates a joy in the act of painting. In this sense he is close to the tradition of the New York School, both the color field artists and the gestural abstractionists. Color is a primary element in Leonardi's art—who would have thought that it might be used as a structural device, its application alone the basis of the artist's strong efforts? In the case of Leonardi, we see an artist in love with the application of paint, specifically acrylic paint, as an act of belief and beauty. The student of theorist and painter Joseph Albers at Yale, Leonardi comes across as a brilliant employer of color, in both its physical and metaphysical properties. He expresses his primarily abstract themes with a distinct methodology, applying acrylic on glass and then cutting It into strips or small rectangles or triangles of pure paint, collaging them onto the surface of the canvas; the artist's use of close-to-pure abstraction enables him to treat color as a dedicated exploration—it's what gives his art the energy it has.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio Lisa Jones experienced here first encounter with the arts in 1971, as a third grader during a trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibit was Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. The series of canvases artistically presented Monet’s ability to capture a single subject in different light conditions. The play of light and the swirling colors intrigued Lisa and stirred her creative appetite toward photography.  

In 1979, at the age of 15, Lisa borrowed her father’s 35 mm Volghtlander camera to experiment with light, color and theme.  Known for its excellent lens design, its curvature of field delivered sharp and crisp photos.  As a novice photographer, her initial photos focused on the effect of light upon subjects and the variations found in black and white film.