Dawn Leone is a classically trained contemporary artist and visual arts educator from New York.
Dawn’s work explores printmaking methods through present-day concerns of the natural world.
Her work has received several awards and has been exhibited across the United States and in several countries in Europe.
Recent Work
2020 - present - Land & Sea
Evolving from IceScapes, is Land & Sea. Our planet is a beautiful, but mysterious place. Always changing, however cyclic. This series appreciates beauty while also considers mysteries in nature through life studies, concerns of human interruption in nature, and patterns/cycles in nature.
2018- 2020 - IceScapes
Icescapes is series exploring the textural and tonal varieties of glacier ice through oil painting and reduction woodcut printmaking methods.
The Icescapes series was inspired by the dynamic and otherworldly landscape of Iceland. From the incredible lagoon of floating glaciers in Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon to the active volcanic mountains, Iceland truly is the land of fire & ice . Giant ice once belonging to the Breidamerkurjokull glacier float along the lagoon slowly melting becoming one with the sea while other ice floes get tumbled through roaring waves along the coast. As giant ice islands melt from their bottoms into the lagoon’s lake, they become top-heavy quickly flipping themselves over. Something that seemed so still and inanimate suddenly comes alive. Watching ice floes flip is like watching a sleeping giant toss in bed. They create a large swell then a ripple event takes place affecting the surrounding icefloes. While observing, photographing, and kayaking in between these glacier fragments, it was critical to watch for this flipping effect in order not to capsize.
As icebergs melt, flip, and rotate they morph into unexpected shapes and colors. The colors and textures of all this frozen water are not only beautiful but have meaning. They tell a story of climate. The different ratios of oxygen trapped in the ice explain how fast the water froze and how compressed the hydrogen was compared to oxygen. The whiter the ice, the more oxygen is present. The oxygen trapped in the ice also tell a story, like a time capsule. These capsules contain elements in the air at the time the ice formed. I studied the white, blue, and green ice variations surrounding the lagoon. Light bounces between glaciers, the sky, and reflects from the lagoon a mesmerizing effect of color takes place.
The objective of the Icescape series is an attempt to capture pieces of this experience. A body of 15 works created over the course of four years include oil paintings and reduction woodcuts ranging in sizes small as 2 square inches up to over 7 feet. Highlighted in this series are two award winning woodcuts Reynisfjara (24”x87”) printed with Big Ink, awarded by Mamaroneck Artist Guild and Jokulsarlon (2 sqft) awarded by The Center for Contemporary Printmaking.
2015- 2019 - Mint Series
A series in color theory. Process Blue, Pthalo Green, and Process Yellow tinted with white create a variety of mint flavored artworks. This cheerful and versatile color can turn blue or green depending on its surrounding colors and context in the composition. This series explores the illusion of color where greens and blues get mixed up but also make sense.