BIOGRAPHY

Cheryl LeClair-Sommer

 

Cheryl has been interested in creating art since a young child but other interests, a career in law, and raising a family kept her from pursuing her creative talents.  Her desire to create was again sparked after purchasing a pastel landscape from a local artist.  Since 1988, painting in pastels has captured her creative spirit with the vast array of colors and the luminosity of color. 

Private studies, classes at community art centers, and workshops with nationally known pastellists have provided the educational underpinnings to bring her artwork to a new level. 

Since 2003, Cheryl has joined a group of three pastel artists to concentrate on painting outdoors.  She has found that working outdoors provides a greater connection between the subject and the artwork that photography cannot replicate.  Her work has developed renewed vigor from working outdoors. 

Her efforts have produced recognition for her pastel paintings.  In 2005, a piece was juried into the International Association of Pastel Societies exhibit at ArtSource Fine Art Gallery in Raleigh, N.C.  As a juried participant in a six-week plein air painting event through Local Color Gallery, Cheryl exhibited ten paintings cityscapes focusing on “Four Corners & The Cathedral,” where one of her pieces won Honorable Mention.  In the spring of 2007, Cheryl will attend a two-week residency at Cornucopia Center for the Arts in Lanesboro, MN.  Cheryl’s future goals are to exhibit as a group with her fellow plein air artists and to produce a solo exhibit.