LeeAnn Brook’s artwork explores landscapes through color and movement, juxtaposing the abstract and figurative qualities of nature

LeeAnn Brook in front of her painting Creekbed, inspired by Martis Creek Lake. Known for her large-format contemporary landscape paintings, Brook strives to create a feeling of place by use of color, texture and atmosphere in her work, photo by Ingrid Nelson

On a chilly December evening in downtown Truckee, a respectable crowd braved the cold to attend LeeAnn Brook’s art reception at Piper J Gallery. Her new exhibition, titled “River Run,” featuring modern abstract landscape paintings, captures the emotion of the Sierra Nevada through Brook’s wide brushstrokes, distinctively vivid colors and unique perspectives of the region’s most beloved places.

Brook used her artist talk to discuss the inspiration for “River Run,” generated by her fascination with viewpoint, atmosphere and the colors of waterways as seen through her personal lens. The longtime Nevada City resident is constantly observing the texture of wetland grasses, the hues of silver-toned mountains, and the full scale of the river and coastal environments she visits.  

She then uses what she remembers from those places to translate it to canvas. Brook works from memory—not photographs—and her unique versions of these places have gained many followers and critical acclaim over the years. 

Among her long list of accomplishments, Brook, who has been one of the top-selling artists in Piper J Gallery for the past three years, is a five-time award winner in the California State Fair and a five-time winner in the nationally recognized Wild & Scenic Film Festival art competition, including the Juror’s Award in 2022 and Best Of 2D in 2018. She has also garnered five national awards for her book Points of Inspiration: An Artist’s Journey with Painting and Photography. 

Artistic Roots

Brook has been a full-time artist for more than 25 years, though her interest in art started when she was a little girl living in Connecticut. Her father died when she was young and her mother had little money for art supplies. But when she was set up with an easel and paints in kindergarten, she developed a love of art and eventually found she had a knack for it. 

She remembers painting one of her first pieces in school as her classmates gathered around her in awe. 

“Are you going to be an artist someday?” they asked.

“Yes! I am,” the 6-year-old Brook confidently replied.  

Years later, as a teenager living at Diamond Lake in Connecticut, she met someone who taught her about Michelangelo and Impressionism, which sparked her intrigue. She grew up around cow pastures and trees, and did a lot of swimming, boating and sailing. 

“My bathing suit was never dry,” she says. 

In the winter, she ice-skated on Diamond Lake, all the while painting scenes of the area and its “gorgeous countryside.”  

While being an artist was a rare profession for women in the early 1970s, Brook remembers receiving encouragement from those around her when they saw her potential. 

“We didn’t have any money for college, so my mom told me I should be a secretary, which was a common job for women at that time,” Brook says. “But thanks to scholarships, I was able to afford to go to a small art school near Yale. I was a graphic design and fine art major, graduating with honors.” 

West-Bound

Brook’s education gave her a solid foundation in graphic design, and after college she was hired by an ad agency in Boston. She accepted a job offer in the Bay Area the following year, in 1976, and drove her Volkswagen Beetle cross-country to continue her graphic design work while still painting on the side.

Brook’s Time Lapse illustrates her fascination with the abstraction of water patterns on mountain lakes, courtesy photo

Planted on the West Coast, Brook eventually started her own graphic design agency and took on University of California Press as a client, doing book design. However, at the time, her then-husband got a job in Nevada City, and they made the move to the Sierra foothills. This was 1977 when there was no fax, no UPS, no FedEx, no Amazon, definitely no email, and all book/ad design proofs had to be hand-delivered. 

Despite the lack of connectivity, Brook’s business grew. 

“I had five employees,” she says. “Even when computers came along, I was always adamant I’d still have hand-drawn art in all my designs.”

She became adept at marketing her own work, which helped when she transitioned into making fine art full-time. On top of that, she had been selling her paintings at art shows in and around San Francisco, and people from across the globe started buying it. 

In 2015, a friend bought a building in downtown Nevada City but hadn’t leased it out yet, so Brook held a pop-up gallery in the space for a few months. She did her own PR, knew how to write and had a following from all those studio tours and art shows she had done before. She began selling her work in the space and signed a three-year lease, making art in her studio that also served as a storefront. 

“People loved walking in and meeting the person who did the work,” Brook says. 

She also curated other artwork, hired a sales assistant and hosted monthly shows. As her business continued to expand, she moved into a bigger space on Nevada City’s main street, which drew in more traffic. She represented up to 20 artists by that point, mostly from the Bay Area and Sierra foothills. 

“I wanted to level up, bring in contemporary work. And it was fun to see who the customer was, where they came from,” she says. 

Loyal Fan Base

Bay Area resident John Hayman does not consider himself an art collector, yet he owns “10 to 12” of Brook’s pieces.

“My wife and I went out to dinner in Nevada City and noticed great art on the wall,” says Hayman. “We built a house in Lake of the Pines and had a niche in there that we thought a great piece of art could go into. [At the restaurant], we grabbed LeeAnn’s card and went into her studio. I wouldn’t call myself an art collector, but I know what I like and buy what I like.”

In reference to her piece Breathtaker, LeeAnn Brook says, “The movement of color on the landscape is inspired by the vast viewpoints from mountain ranges of the West,” courtesy photo

Hayman commissioned Brook to do a custom piece and then bought several more artworks for his lake house. The commission hangs in his bedroom, and he continues to appreciate its colors and creativity. 

“She sets the standard, the bar, on art for me,” Hayman says. “I go to art galleries in Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea, and I think, ‘That’s nice, but it’s not as good as LeeAnn’s work.’”

Debbie Delaney of Folsom is also partial to Brook’s fine art.

“We first met LeeAnn when we went to Nevada City and saw her studio,” she says. “I’d never bought any original art before LeeAnn’s. I always knew I liked abstract art, but my taste exceeded my budget quite often.”  

From that first encounter, Delaney’s eyes fell on a painting titled Out of the Blue, and she and her husband took it home to try it out. While they own more of Brook’s work, Out of the Blue remains their favorite piece. 

“It’s very colorful,” Delaney says. “It makes me happy and smile. It’s calming and very warm. When you walk in the room, it’s the first thing you notice.” 

When asked what differentiates Brook’s art from others, Delaney points to her unique color palette. 

“Walking into the Piper J Gallery, I knew without looking at the tag that it was LeeAnn’s,” she says. “I like the bold, more colorful paintings. Her creativity and the way she pulls colors together to create something beautiful and calming … it’s nice to know she’s still out there making art. And knowing LeeAnn as a person, I feel so fortunate to have the ability to have her work in our home.”

Pivoting for the Pandemic

Brook’s Nevada City gallery, LeeAnn Brook Fine Art, was so successful that she was ready to re-sign the lease for another five years, but then March 2020 came.

“It was like someone was looking down on me, telling me not to sign that lease,” Brook says. 

With most businesses affected by the pandemic lockdown, Brook decided to close her gallery and focus on marketing her own work and doing studio tours. 

“Having my own gallery was such hard work but so rewarding,” Brook says. “It was like working in a candy store, being surrounded by work I love and art collectors who appreciate it. I couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning and go to work.”

In 2022 she participated in the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, where Piper J Gallery owner Piper Monika Johnson was a judge. Johnson was impressed with Brook’s work and offered to represent her in the gallery. 

“She (Johnson) has an amazing ability to curate shows, and it was nice to let go of my gallery because I can just focus on painting now,” says Brook, who also operates LeeAnn Brook Fine Art from her home studio, meeting with interested collectors by appointment. 

Reflecting on her career, Brook credits her success to persistence, believing in herself and trusting her instincts, which, at this point in her life, tell her to keep doing what she loves most: “My real thrill is to cut loose, paint on large canvases and use big brushstrokes,” she says. 

Evidenced by her latest exhibition, Brook remains true to that desire. And for that, her fans are thankful. 

“Anything distinctive [like LeeAnn’s art], I call it ‘miles behind the brush,’” Johnson says. “You know how they say it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at something … to get that unique style takes time.”

Brook, who shows her work year-round at Piper J Gallery and Ridgeline Gallery in downtown Truckee, will have a solo show at Ridgeline Gallery for the month of August. Learn more at leeannbrookfineart.com.  

Longtime Tahoe-based writer Kayla Anderson is involved with the Piper J and Ridgeline galleries in downtown Truckee, where she enjoys being surrounded by fine art of different mediums. She is inspired by the ingenuity that goes into pieces like Brook’s, and is drawn mostly to her abstract landscape paintings.