Leslie Ehrin
Tranformational Paintings
Through traveling and observing Nature, I create paintings that have a transformative effect, not only on me, but on the viewers. When I travel, I try to capture the essence of a place by highlighting the emotional response it evokes, through light, color, texture, patterns, composition, line, form and values. The combination of these elements - with a special emphasis upon light and color, serve to communicate the feeling of a place that can uplift and transport the viewer to a new mindset.
I was introduced to painting at age sixteen months, when my artist educator mother put me into a bathtub, surrounded by sheets of news print taped to the walls, with tempera paint in baby food jars, each with its own brush, sitting on the edge of the tub.
She told me that this is where I should create pictures, rather than drawing crayon images on the newly wallpapered walls of our home. Soon thereafter, I started talking and telling stories about my paintings, which led to the development of writing skills. Painting, therefore, was my original creative method of communication and visual storytelling.
Today, I write stories to accompany my paintings and photographs, but rather than taping them to the walls around the tub, they hang in corporate and private collections, in boardrooms and homes across the U.S., Europe and Australia, and magazines such as International Living publish them. I exhibit my work in shows in the U.S. and in Europe.
Earlier, I earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art History and English Literature from The University of Pennsylvania, After graduation, I entered the field of book publishing and then attended graduate school at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. For nine years after that, I managed an art gallery at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, where I sold fine art to corporate and private collectors on the East Coast. During holidays and vacations, I traveled extensively throughout Great Britain, Europe, Scandinavia, S. Africa, The Caribbean, Hawaii, Alaska and the Continental U.S. I photographed and painted everywhere I went. During a trip to Italy in 1998, I rode a Vespa from Florence to Rome, painting in Renaissance villas, nestled in medieval hill towns, among poppies and sunflower fields and sun drenched vineyards. When I returned home, those paintings sold quickly. Shortly thereafter, I was invited to do a photoshoot in Paris.
In 2000, I left the Museum to paint full time and started Leslie Ehrin Fine Art, I won a grant in 2005 which advanced my business and subsequently, I won painting awards and prizes while teaching painting and exhibiting work in local and regional art centers, in galleries, in nationally recognized juried shows, art fairs and festivals on the East Coast. During the last twenty years, my work has been collected by corporate and private collectors on four continents.
In 2003, I had a One-Woman Show of my Tuscany paintings, at Cabrini University and in 2010, I exhibited more Tuscany paintings at The University of Pennsylvania Faculty Club in a One-Woman Retrospective. Along the way, there have been many juried shows up and down the East Coast of the U.S. In 2026, I participated in my first show in Europe, in Naples, Italy, at Chiesa di Santa Maria di Portosalvo, a former Baroque Church turned cultural center. The show as called Abissi in Superficie, or the Abyss Beneath the Surface, to conote that what lies on the surface, literally and figuratively, is not the entire truth of a situation or place.Every spring, for the last fourteen years, I have exhibited rural landscape paintings punctuated with Pennsylvania farm animals, textured views from Tuscan villas, colorful Caribbean sunsets shimmering on crystalline turquoise waters, sun splashed Nantucket beaches and water soaked images from along rocky coastlines in Maine, at the Devon Horse Show and County Fair in Devon, PA, In 2000, my painting, "Ogunquit, Maine, Walking Along the Marginal Way" won Best in Show. I love painting landscapes and animals, and try to capture the soul of the beast when doing so.
My creative and artistic inspiration dwells intimately with nature. Traveling the world has introduced me to a variety of spectacular sceneries which have left me awestruck, but it is always the activity of nature within those destinations that has taken my breath away. Perhaps I pay closer attention to the dramatic power and majesty of nature when I’m away from home than when I am involved with the daily routines of living locally. In its most destructive state, nature has the power to devastate and to destroy, but it is with its innate grace, it also has the ability to heal the soul and nourish the spirit.. Simply visiting tourist destinations does not delight, but rather it is through watching seafoam riding waves, observing cypress trees marching stoically across undulating hillsides, or seeking the sun, the moon, and the stars, hiding amidst clouds in the sky, playing peek a boo behind mountains, that has healed, restored and inspired me to want to tell a story with paint.
My techniquesi involve working in acrylic. paint on canvas both in thick impasto, multi layers of paint, which I slather. on primarily with brushes, but I also employ palette knives,and when the paint layers of color have been built up to my satisfaction, I cut down through the layers, often with the end of my paintbrush, or with a palete knife, which reveals layers of underlying color. This gives my paintings a richly luxuriant, opulent look and feel, with numerous complementary and analogous colors vibrating together. It is the combination of vibrant color, in concert with elegant textures that make my paintings so interesting when viewed close up. At a distance, they read like beautiful vistas-inviting landscape views-but upon closer examination, they read like abstract paintings. My landscape paintings are structured compositionally much like Cezannee's paintings. My color theory is heavily influenced by the color theory of Bonnard, Vuilard, and Monet, in that I surround vibract color opposites with earth tones, or neutrals that allow the color to sing.
Professional. art critics such as Victoria Donahue of The Philadelphia Inquirer have often reviewed exhibits of my work in the Philadelphia environs with complementary statements such as, ";Leslie Ehrin's elegantly colorful paintings have a lot of clout, depicting richly verdant landscapes with a lush impasto technique, and strong compositions that make the viewer truly experience the textures of the Italian landscape..".
I am best known in the mid-Atlantic region for my Tuscan paintings, having shown in countless galleries, art centers and regional juried shows for the last 25 years, but I have also had two one -woman shows: one retrospective in 2010 at the UPENN Faculty Club and earlier at Cabrini University in 2004. Since then, I have exhibited in galleries, art festivals, art fairs and juried exhibits from Florida to Texas to MA, NH and Maine, most frequently showing at Vanderbuilt Galleries in Nantucket, MA, Naples, FL, and Palm Beach, FL. i have, also exhibited with Chew & Company Design and Gallery in New Hampshire in recent years. For the last fourteen years, I have exhibited at The Devon Horse Show and County Fair in Devon, PA., and in 2020, my Ogunquit, Maine painting won Best in Show. Hospitals, healthcare organizations, numerous multinational corporations, Architctural and Design firms, as well as private collectors who buy my work for their homes, all enjoy collecting my paintings and photography.
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