Leah Thompson has been a professional artist and elementary school art teacher in Roanoke, VA for over 20 years. She specializes in creating colorful and expressive oil paintings. She is best known for her impressionistic paintings of ballerina dancers. Leah also paints vivid genre paintings, landscapes, and florals as well as commissioned works. Though oil paint is her primary medium of choice, she enjoys working in acrylic, pen and ink, and oil pastel.

“The whole premise of any of my work is the energy and the fleetingness of life. People aren’t stagnant, they move constantly. I want to capture that in my paintings through vivid colors and gestural brush strokes. That energy (that fleetingness of life) happens throughout my creative process- from the first sketches to the final work. I sketch life as it passes by me. I love to sketch anywhere there are people-restaurants, hospitals, malls, church, the gym…

My paintings are inspired by the works of Degas, Van Gogh, Kandinsky and the German Expressionists.”