Abby Leigh showed 52 vivid watercolors at the Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs, a domed church constructed in 1641. Her small works, all painted in 1994-95, describe her summertime existence in the town of St. Paul de Vence. She paints what is close to her; her pensive husband, her children swimming underwater, the countryside with its distinctive hilltop villages, flowers, vegetables, and fruit.
These simply arranged still lifes reveal a naturalist’s eye and an acuteness that might have impressed Charles Darwin. Leigh has a knack for noticing every tiny blemish on each piece of fruit she paints-her sense of detail is exquisite. Fittingly, the titles are simple — Three Figs, Tomatoes — for what Leigh aims to portray is a sense of solitude and the essence of her subjects.
Her palette is easily associated with the south of France. Sensuous hues record the colors of foods: fig purple, aubergine violet, peach orange, tomato red, lime green, lemon yellow. The texture and the form of her subjects-the skin of the apricot, the roundness of the apples — beautifully complemented the chapel's cool, whitewashed walls.
The only large (88 by 31 inches) painting, Carrots, was perhaps Leigh's most successful in suggesting the earthy freshness and seductiveness of common vegetables.
In a different vein, Leigh's Hockneyesque underwater paintings surreally juxtapose weightless bubbles and ripples of water with solid, often headless or limbless bodies. These images contrasted nicely with the delicately rendered fruits and vegetables.