About

Raye Leith settled in Santa Fe in 2018 after a dozen years of visiting to hike and draw in the Southwest, enamored of the vastness, turbulence, and spirituality of the unique land and weather forms. Responding to New Mexico’s rhythmic, sculptural, and towering rock formations, and ever-evolving weather forms, both challenges and provides equanimity for her.

Intimately-scaled work (5 x 9.5 inches) of an immense subject offers a private journey, and possibility to breathe deeply, within a small work of art. In spite of the allure and magnificence of the colors of the Southwest, Raye gravitates to a monochrome palette to enhance the volumes and rhythms of her subjects.

In the decades preceding her move to the Southwest, Raye taught perspective, color theory, artistic anatomy, and painting at the Smithsonian Associate Program, the University of Maryland, and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She began her formal art studies at the Art Students League of New York at the age of 11, taught by protégés of WPA Social Realism, which imbues her work with a sense of a century passed, through a contemporary lens.