Marc van der Leeden

Whether he is presenting sun-bleached lighthouses or the faint shadows that slant down a wall in a mix of warm and cool tones, sunlight in Marc van der Leeden's subtly powerful watercolors is a palpable presence. When focusing his work on the complexities of trees and other flora, sunlight is entwined in the dapples by which Marc suggests the natural's world's complexity. The lyrical beauty of Marc's images couples nicely with the instinctive manner of their composition, as his works straddle a line between the serenity we seek from such pastoral works and the power that comes about from their painterly creation. While his subject matter is rooted in a long tradition of landscape imagery, his brushwork is contemporary in that its evocative strength lies in the way it provides the space for us to complete these works with our own emotional associations. Marc van der Leeden's beautiful watercolors capture the mercurial aspects of sunlight with his sensitive vision, and his controlled yet inspired brushwork.