Artist

Leigh Palmer

born Westerly, RI 1943
Born
Westerly, Rhode Island, United States
Active in
  • Duxbury, Massachusetts, United States
Biography

After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied with Richard Merkin, Palmer spent two years in Peru with the Peace Corps. On his return to the United States in 1968, he did graduate work in film studies at Boston University and made educational films for several years before moving to a Pennsylvania farm. He worked as a builder and contractor to support himself until about 1982, and since then has been painting full time. Initially fascinated with the work of Gene Davis, Kenneth Noland, and other members of the Washington Color School, Palmer did hard-edged color field canvases early in his career. Since the early 1980s, however, he has concentrated on still life, setting simple arrangements of fruit and objects into interior spaces and exploring dramatic patterning of light and shadow.

Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987)

Works by this artist (1036 items)

William H. Johnson, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1935-1938, oil on burlap, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.814
Portrait of a Man
Dateca. 1935-1938
oil on burlap
On view
William H. Johnson, Tehran Conference, ca. 1945, oil on plywood, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.647
Tehran Conference
Dateca. 1945
oil on plywood
On view
William H. Johnson, Ferry Boat Trip, ca. 1943-1944, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.1011
Ferry Boat Trip
Dateca. 1943-1944
oil on paperboard
On view
William H. Johnson, For India and China, ca. 1944-1945, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.662
For India and China
Dateca. 1944-1945
oil on paperboard
On view