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A Dynamic Duo In Multiple Arts
A Dynamic Duo In Multiple Arts
By Joe Motheral
A recent visit to the Hamilton home of Leanne and Richard Fink offered the perfect opportunity to explore their passion for painting, playwriting, poetry and cartoons.
Leanne is a gifted artist and her gorgeous landscape paintings showcasing western Loudoun County are displayed all around the house. Downstairs, Richard is proud to pull out copies of his plays, his poems and his cartoons.
He’s had four plays performed at Franklin Park Arts Center in Purcellville. In 2020, a comedy called “My Accidental Life,” also gave him the opportunity to perform on stage.
Packing Up The Car
Headed to the park
My backpack was full Hefty as can be
Climbing up the Mountain
Barely moving at the top
Until the snake said hello
Down, down away I go.
—Richard Fink
Viewing the video, the audience can be heard frequently laughing out loud as Richard delivers his lines. Elizabeth Bracey, Managing Director of Performing and Visual Arts at Franklin Park said, “We had a good, lively audience and it reminded me of when there were comedy radio shows.”
The three others staged at Franklin Park included “Tour Package” in 2018, “Over the Wall” in 2019 and “Thought You Were Dead” in 2022. He’s written a dozen plays, the first produced in New Jersey in 2013, and all are comedies
“Laughter has no language barrier,” he said. “A good belly laugh is contagious and makes everyone around you feel better.”
Richard is now planning to pen a memoir, and he’s also written a book of poetry— “It’s a Weird World.”
Leanne’s world revolves around painting, and not just in Virginia. She’s captured locations ranging from the Grand Canyon to Jordan, though most of her paintings do focus on Loudoun landscapes.
“I like the local scenes,” she said. “And I like having one-on-one interaction and a connection in the local art community scene….I do enjoy painting plein air. It’s a grounding experience to be outside, communing with nature’s elements and creating art from what I see.”
She said she particularly cherishes the “here and now, working quickly to capture a moment of brilliant lighting, the contours of wandering shadows and fleeting patterns in the sky.”
In addition to plein air painting and using photos, she once said that she takes images from her dreams while asleep. She describes this unusual practice when she dreams of an image that holds her attention.
When she wakes up, “I do kind of a memory game—remembering the composition and the colors. Then if it sticks in my head for three or four days I know it’s worthy of being put on canvas.”
One example is a painting she called “Green Dream,” with blocks of light green objects over a dark background perched on a sand-colored image. “It can raise questions in the viewer’s mind,” she said. “It has a riveting quality.”
Her work has been honored with numerous awards and was displayed recently in the Art League Gallery August Open Exhibit at Torpedo Factory in Alexandria and at Artists in Middleburg.
