Stephen Leigh & S.L. Farrell

THE ARTWORK FOR SALE IS HERE!

NOTE: I've adjusted the pricing (down!) on these, and will entertain offers for any of the pieces. I'll be putting more pieces up for sale in the coming days. So if any of these catch your eye, now's the time to grab it before someone else does. Once one's gone, it's gone...

THE BACKSTORY: Since my retirement from teaching, I’ve been doing more painting (and have also uncovered older artwork down in the basement from my university days). So things are piling up here, and I’ve decided that I don't want to emulate Joseph Mallord William Turner, one of my favorite artists—better known than as J.M.W. Turner. On his death in 1852, Turner left behind more than 550 oil paintings (!), 2,000 watercolors (!!), and 30,000 (!!!) works on paper. I’m going to try to sell some of my artwork for far, far, far less than a genuine Turner, so Denise or our children don’t have to deal with figuring out what to do with all of it. Maybe.

A few comments on the pieces listed below:

1) With rare exceptions, these are my actual paintings and sketches, not prints or copies. So if you purchase one, you own the original—it’s yours and yours alone and no one else will have another piece like it. It’s not like buying one of my books where there are hundreds of other identical copies out there!

2) SOLD pieces that are no longer for sale are at the end of this, if you want to see what you missed.

3) How do you buy a piece? If you’re interested in purchasing something, send me an email by clicking the link on this line. Give the title of the piece as the subject, and I’ll send you an email in return to get the process started. If you're local enough for us to meet, there's (obviously) no shipping charge; if not, I'll charge only the actual shipping cost, whatever it happens to be.

4) Unless specifically noted otherwise, all of these pieces are matted but unframed, and that’s how they’ll come to you. I’m not a professional mat-cutter, though I try to do my best. I have no experience at all with framing, hence everything is without a frame. If you want a fancier mat or a different color, you’re welcome to take it to your local framing shop. I use acid-free matboard and backing boards, and attach the painting or drawing to the mat with acid-free artist’s tape. You should be able to disassemble the mat and replace it without damaging the painting.

5) I’ll be adding new work to this page as time goes on, so bookmark the URL and come back occasionally!

6) And a note on the photography: There’s often keystoning (when the edges of the photo aren't perfectly rectangular/parallel) from the lens on my camera in these, so ignore that. The paintings are true rectangles. Honest!

7) If you click on one of the paintings, you'll be taken to a larger image.

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Price: $25 (or make offer!)

Title: “A Storm, Hill Demon, Three Figures, and a Red Boat” || Size: approx. 8.25 x 12.25 inches || Mat size: approx. 13 x16 inches || Medium: watercolor || Notes: A watercolor from August, 2022 while experimenting with colors and shape. I just let the painting take me where it wanted to go. The 'demon' lurking in the top hill I didn't find until I was matting the work; I did a quick revision to bring it out.

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Price: $12 (or make offer!)

Title: “Hot Press?” || Size: approx. 3.9 x 9.8 inches, unmatted || Medium: watercolor pencil || Notes: A watercolor done in June 2022 while painting with my daughter Megen. This was an experiment using hot press watercolor paper (I've always used cold press in the past) as well as an unusual tall/thin format and watercolor pencils. Still, I like what emerged!

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Price: $40 (or make offer!)

Title: “Oh Say Can You See The Sea Cliffs” || Size: approx. 10 x 14 inches || Mat size: approx. 14 x 18 inches || Medium: watercolor pencil || Notes: A watercolor done in April 2022. I like how this one came together. A really loose under-wash to set up the composition, followed by ‘sharper’ layers to tighten up the details but still leaving some of the under-wash showing. This one gives me a sense that I’m starting to understand what it is I’m trying to accomplish with the medium.

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Price: $25 (or make offer!)

Title: “Appalachian Spring” || Size: approx. 10.5 x 8.25 inches || Mat size: approx. 14.5 x 12.5 inches || Medium: watercolor and watercolor pencil || Notes: A watercolor done in March of 2022. The hills are based on remembered images of driving through Appalachia and the Smoky Mountains. I rather like the hills in this. I added the house and adjacent cottage to give a human element to what would otherwise be an empty landscape.

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Price: $25 (or make offer!)

Title: “Old Man, Look At My Life” || Size: approx. 9 x 11 inches || Mat size: approx. 11 x 14 inches || Medium: watercolor || Notes: A monochromatic watercolor done sometime in the 1970s or even in the late 60s in high school (I recall having a paint a portait as an assignment in Charlie Wanda’s art class back then) — sorry I can’t be more specific. A portrait of a young man, but who it actually was, I don’t remember. Another piece recovered from an old portfolio in the basement. I like it, though, whomever it was and whenever it was painted.

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Price: $15 (or make offer!)

Title: “The Pipes, The Pipes Are Calling” || Size: approx. 7.5 x 6 inches || Mat size: approx. 10.55 x 10.33 || Medium: Colored Pens on Board || Notes: I remember doing this for a class still-life. I smoked pipes at the time (because I thought pipes were cool), and set up this arrangement and drew it first in pencil, then colored that in with pens. I still like how the use of blue and orange worked. On the back off the board I wrote “SP ’71”, so I can place this piece as having been done in the Spring semester of 1971.

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Price: FREE if you're SG, $25 if you're not (or make offer!)

Title: “Portrait of SG” || Size: approx. 10 x 14 inches || Mat size: approx. 16 x 20 inches || Medium: watercolor || Notes: This probably dates between 1974 - 1976 (I don’t remember exactly when) — a quick watercolor sketch of Steve Gallant, one of the members of Bluestone Ivory, the band I was with at the time. I likely sketched this at our band house in North College Hill.

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Price: $15 (or make offer!)

Title: “Teacher” || Size: approx. 6.75 x 10 inches || Mat size: approx. 10 x 13 inches || Medium: lithograph print || Notes: Drawn in 1973. I was taking a print making class in college at the time, and this was done on a lithography stone. A rather odd fantasy drawing for me, a bizarre and distorted image of a medieval teacher (who appears to be female, if the breasts are any indication), but hey, this was the first time I was attempting to do lithography. I don't think I had any particular teacher in mind, but who knows? Under the guidance of the print-making professor, I prepared the stone, grinding it down until if was perfectly smooth. I drew the image, etched the stone, inked it, and pulled five prints; this was the first. SPECIAL LOW PRICE!

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Price: $15 (or make offer!)

Title: “Village Near The Lake” || Size: approx. 4.5 x 13.75 inches || Mat size: approx. 8.5 x 17 inches || Medium: watercolor || Notes: Painted March 2022. A village sits on the slopes below a high mountain lake with an island in the middle. The scene’s entirely imaginary. SPECIAL LOW PRICE!

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Price: $15 (or make offer!)

Title: “Red Sky At Night” || Size: approx. 4.5 x 13.75 inches || Mat size: approx. 8.5 x 17 inches || Medium: watercolor || Notes: Painted March 2022. A ruddy sunset looms over the wooded hills. Is there a fire below or is it just the sun? The scene’s entirely imaginary. This one I need to replace the mat, as it's somehow picked up a stain and marks -- but I'll do that before I ship it out. SPECIAL LOW PRICE!

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Price: $40 (or make offer!)

Title: “Hello! Can You See Me?” || Size: approx. 12 x 10.25 inches || Mat size: approx. 16 x 14.25 inches || Medium: watercolor and watercolor pencil || Notes: Painted January 2022. A figure waving to a distant village from a headland across a river or perhaps a bay. How the two are connected is up to you; I have my own thoughts on that but they don't matter—you can make up your own story. This is an entirely imaginary scene, though undoubtedly Irish-influenced.

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Price: $20 (or make offer!)

Title: “Birds over the Bens” || Size: approx. 4.25 x 11.25 inches || Mat size: approx 9.25 x 15 inches || Medium: watercolor and watercolor pencil || Notes: Painted January 2022. A small flock of birds ride the updrafts around one of the Twelve Bens, which are the major peaks in Connemara National Park in Ireland. If you go to Ireland, I strongly suggest you visit the Connemara region; it's flat-out gorgeous/

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Price: $50 (or make offer!)

Title: “Portrait of Robert Fabe” || Size: approx. 8.5 x 11 inches || Mat size: approx. 11 x 14 inches || Medium: Conté Crayon || Notes: Sketched in 1974. At that point in time, I was taking a couple Independent Study courses with Professor Bob Fabe at U.C.; Bob was one of my primary mentors as an artist. He was a very well-known artist in Cincinnati and the surrounding region—you still find homes with his prints or paintings hanging on the walls. In fact, there's an original Fabe sketch on one of our walls that he did that he graciously let me keep, as well of one of his prints.

I habitually regaled my own writing students with a couple of Bob Fabe anecdotes. Here's one of those: one day I was working on a painting when I felt Bob come up behind me and stare over my shoulder at what I was working on. I glanced back at him. He just continued to look at what I was painting. I finally turned back, continued to work as Bob continued to watch, standing right behind me. Suddenly I felt him (gently) slap me on the side of my head. Annoyed, I turned. "What the hell, Bob...?" I began. He just shrugged and replied "That one's done. If you keep working, you'll ruin it." He then added: "Every artist needs someone to let them know that they're done and need to stop." He grinned at me and walked away.

Aside from his talents as an artist, he was also an incredibly generous and kind man. Bob passed away in 2004 at the age of 87. (More info about Bob is here.)

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Price: $15 (or make offer!)

Title: “Two Hills with Trees” || Size: approx. 2.25 x 9 inches || Mat size: approx. 13 x 7.5 inches || Medium: Watercolor || Notes: This was painted October 2021. This is a small painting where I was playing with foliage texture, just for myself. I did several trees and bushes on a larger piece of paper but the above was the only portion I kept because I was pleased with the way trees looked. It isn't any particular place or particular theme; it was mostly me practicing watercolor techniques. Beyond that, there's not much to say.

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Price: $15 (or make offer!)

Title: “Blue Panorama” || Size: approx. 3.25 x 11.25 inches || Mat size: approx. 6.75 x 14.75 inches || Medium: Watercolor || Notes: This was painted January of 2022. These relatively abstract mountains remind me of the Connemara region in Ireland (which has often been a influence on my artwork. my writing. and even my music!) In 1999, when I first visited Ireland, I wrote this on looking out over a vista in Connemara National Park:

Sharon (my sister) and I took a hike out from the Visitor’s Centre halfway up the slope of one of the Bens. There, we could look out over a few miles of hills and see the ocean again: a harbor nestled beneath another mountain. I stood there, and I realized something. I’ve often painted imaginary landscapes of mountains and water, and those landscapes were nothing I’d ever seen in real life. Instead they were drawn from somewhere inside: long slopes and mists. “Those are the mountains I draw,” I told Sharon suddenly. And they were: this was the landscape I’ve often tried to reproduce—green slopes devoid of many trees with hidden, folded valleys below. Looking out at the vista, I felt myself at home.

I'm still drawing and painting those ancestral(?) memories.

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Price: $20 (or make offer!)

Title: “Purple Hills At Dusk” || Size: approx. 4.25 x 11.5 inches || Mat size: approx. 8 x 14.75 inches || Medium: Watercolor || Notes: This was painted January of 2022. Not Connemara this time but still in Ireland: the Wicklow Hills region south of Dublin, specifically in Glendalough, best known for an Early Medieval monastic settlement, founded in that glacial valley in the 6th century by St. Kevin. Glendalough is gorgeous and well-worth visiting should you ever be in Ireland. This main hill in this watercolor very much resembles one of the photos I took there, though I wasn't looking at that photo (nor trying to reproduce it) as I was painting this. I was strictly working from memory and feeling.

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Price: $20 (or make offer!)

Title: “That Lake Has A Wavering Horizon” || Size: approx. 4.5 x 11.75 inches || Mat size: approx. 8.25 x 9.25 inches || Medium: Watercolor || Notes: This was painted January 2021. It's not any place in particular; I just let one brush stroke guide the next for an imaginary scene that, honestly, reminds me of local scenery you could find here in Ohio, or perhaps in some British Isle peatland. I was deliberately being loose with this one, just letting 'happy accidents' happen. The horizon isn't straight, but hey—'loose,' remember?

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Price: $25 (or make offer!)

Title: “Mist In The Valleys” || Size: approx. 8 3/4 X 7 1/4 inches || Mat size: approx 10 7/8 x 10 7/8 inches || Medium: Watercolor || Notes: Painted 10/2021. I was looking back at my photos and noticed one where mist was rising from a valley between steep hills and obscuring the landscape below the summit with a white fog. I'd seen that also in Cincinnati, as well as Appalachia and other areas and countries, and thought I'd try to emulate that vision in a watercolor. Worked out fairly well, I think, and I like the addition of the cottage in the lower right. One of my favorites so far.

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Price: $25 (or make offer!)

Title: “The Window Holds Secrets” || Size: approx. 7 x 9.75 inches || Mat size: approx 10.75 x 14.9 inches || Medium: Watercolor || Notes: Not exactly certain when this was created. Maybe in the early 80s? Depicts a seated man staring out of a window in a dark room. What is he looking at? I'll leave that for the viewer to decide.

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Price: $20 (or make offer!)

Title: “Dawn Over Irish Fields” || Size: approx. 12 x 7 inches || Mat size: approx 16 x 11 inches || Medium: Watercolor || Notes: Painted November, 2021. Fields in the British Isles as well as France are often delineated with shrubbery or trees. So this is that type of landscape of rolling hills, seen at dawn with a small village in the bottom right.

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Price: $40 (or make offer!)

Title: “Two Boats And A Peak” || Size: approx. 14.5 x 9.75 inches || Mat size: approx 18 x 14 inches || Medium: Watercolor and watercolor pencils || Notes: Painted March, 2022. Two boats are pulled up in a river or bay’s beach below a steep peak in a landscape of cliff and hills. Borrowed freely from a remembered photo of the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

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Price: $20 (or make offer!)

Title: “Woman With Walking Stick” || Size: approx. 9 x 6 inches || Mat size: approx 12 x 9 inches || Medium: Watercolor || Notes: Painted 1/21. A female figure holding a walking stick gazes out from between steep hills in a grassy landscape with walking trails. The sun is rising behind the hills, spreading light in the eastern sky.

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SOLD WORK!

(sorry, but the paintings/drawings below are now owned by someone else!)

Title: “The Mountain Keep” || Size: Approx. 14 x 19.75 inches || Mat size: N/A || Medium: watercolor || Notes: A large watercolor begun in 1974, with some revisions in March, 2022. A tower keep set in a mountainous, and storm-lashed landscape. I was re-reading Tolkien’s LORD OF THE RINGS back then, so to me this is evocative of that story, though not directly an illustration of any scene in that. There is no mat, as I don’t have any mat boards large enough for this, so whomever wants this will receive only the painting itself, and the price reflects that.

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Title: “Landscape with Steeple” || Size: 4 x 11 inches, Medium: Watercolor and watercolor pencil || Notes: painted 1/22.

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Title: “Lake Farmland” || Size: 15.25 x 11 inches, Medium: Watercolor and watercolor pencil || Notes: Painted 10/2021. In 2019, I was one of two faculty members on a creative writing Study Abroad trip to Ireland. I was accompanied by my colleague and poet Kelly Moffett as well as several univerity students. During our trip, we visited a deep, hidden valley to see a sheep ranch and watch how the farmer herded the sheep with his dogs via gestures and whistles. Fascinating! This isn't that sheep ranch, but it resembles that valley hidden away in the folds of the hills. There's an abandoned farm across the lake from the sheep ranch that I wished we could have visited as well. On this one I used watercolor pencils fairly extensively; it gives a sharper edge to the landscape that just using watercolor and a brush doesn't.

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Title: “Ambush” || Size: approx. 6 x 8 inches || Mat size: approx 10.4 x 12.5 inches || Medium: pen and ink || Notes: Inked in the mid-1980s (I think—in truth, I don't remember exactly when I did this one) on sketch pad paper that, being relatively cheap, has yellowed significantly over the years. Two fantasy figures stare at you from a stony landscape as they hide behind rocks.

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