VALDOSTA — Leon Colvin works in color pencils, and with these pencils he creates feathers, fur, the rise and fall of sinew just beneath amphibian skin.
Colvin creates wildlife images of polar bears, horses, frogs, birds, the panorama of the ark, the creatures that walk the world.
Right now, Leon Colvin’s art is on exhibit at City Market in the second floor Loft Gallery. He is June’s featured Art After Dark artist, and the exhibit continues through mid-July.
Colvin is known as much for wildlife as the detail he puts into his work. Take a look at the tufts of fur in “Polar Bear Head;” the way the hairs of the mane fall and the marbling of the hair on the neck in “Horse Head;” note the study of contrasts between the glimmer of the eye in “Red Eyed Green Frog” and the shimmer of the water beads on the leaf; the textured pattern of the green vines networking around the birds in “Rainforest Beauties.”
Along with these details comes a study of the animals set in a composition that either forgoes background for exquisite attention to the subject, or incorporates habitat as part of the picture.
In a past interview, Colvin recalled how he had an early interest in art as a youngster growing up in the projects of Chattanooga, Tenn.
“While walking from school, he often stopped at a shop, a fine furniture store, and looked through the windows, at the wildlife paintings inside,” the past article noted. “He didn’t dare enter the store, not a young black teenager of 17 from the projects, that’s how he felt at the time. So, he looked through the windows at the paintings he loved.
“Ruth Wood, the store’s owner, apparently was looking at young Leon Colvin, too. She had seen this young man looking through the window of her store repeatedly. And when the day came, the day that Leon Colvin worked up his nerve to enter the store, Ruth Wood was ready for him.
“Leon Colvin told her that he wanted to paint wildlife pictures like the ones in her store. Ruth Wood showed him a kindness. She gave the teenager several postcards, each one with prints of the art hanging in the store. ‘She was one of the first people, other than family, to support my interest in art,’ Colvin says. ‘She didn’t stop and say how rare is this that a young black kid is interested in wildlife art. She gave me those cards and they were so beautiful.’”
Colvin has lived in Valdosta for nearly three decades. His wildlife art attracts interest not only locally but throughout the South. Colvin has a talent for looking into the eyes of an animal and he has the eye to capture that animal in pencil and paper.
Local News
Related Photos
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Polar Bear Head
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Horse Head
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Rainforest Beauties
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Red Eyed Green Frog
Discussion
Captured Animals
Colvin preserves wildlife on canvas
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