A Dynamic Duo In Multiple Arts
Now Enrolling for the Fall Semester CMSP offers lessons for Piano, Voice, Cello, Violin, Guitar, Saxophone, Flute, Clarinet, Trumpet & more!
“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.”
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By Joe Motheral
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 Photo by Joe Motheral the house. Downstairs, Richard is proud to Leanne and Richard Fink pull out copies of his plays, his poems and his cartoons. He’s had four plays performed at Packing Up The Car Franklin Park Arts Center in Purcellville. In 2020, a comedy called “My Accidental Life,” also gave him the opportunity to Headed to the park My backpack was full perform on stage. Viewing the video, the audience can Hefty as can be be heard frequently laughing out loud Climbing up the Mountain as Richard delivers his lines. Elizabeth Bracey, Managing Director of Performing Barely moving at the top and Visual Arts at Franklin Park said, Until the snake said hello “We had a good, lively audience and it Down, down away I go. reminded me of when there were comedy radio shows.” —Richard Fink 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.
The Community Music School of the Piedmont piedmontmusic.org 540-592-3040
Lessons offered at Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville with additional locations in Fauquier, Frederick and Loudoun
Fall 2024
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