Flee into The Treescape - A Look at Leger's Art

“This is one of many autumn tree studies, some of which I eventually paint as larger than life finished paintings. I call them 'treescapes.'”

Pictured above is one painting up for auction at the Personaland fundraiser, going by the name of “The Mighty Atom”.

In the beautiful sprawling pixel grass of Personaland hide many artists. From the same dimension as us, all humans, all armed with wildly different perspectives, new kinds of art to be shown to and enjoyed by the masses. The Personas carefully curate such a space, their attachment to the natural and the intuitive allowing them to seek out creative souls that undoubtedly value the world around them. Those who seek to tell the stories of nature writ large, like other artists we’ve examined, Maryse and Stewart himself. But instead of photography, or print pastels and colored pencils, Victor Leger’s weapon of choice are oil paints.

Operating out of Connecticut (just like the Personaman!), Victor has been painting since highschool, and is more than a mere artist—he is a connoisseur, a careful observer and curator. Both of nature and of painting. He finds himself taken to recreating scenery plucked from real life and dipped in the idyllism of movies, things from our reality writ large, bold and beautiful. The light filtering through the tender leaves of trees, or the blinding beams it makes as it bounces off the water's surface, this is the beauty that Victor seeks to encapsulate on his 500 x 500 canvas.

Speaking of; he paints in a great variety of sizes. As well as this, he paints on panels in order to get a higher definition in detail. The landscapes he prefers to paint are the ones right around his house and studio in Winchester Lake and the surrounding Litchfield County; the rural vistas of Connecticut. Recently, he has expanded his range to include the Maine coast as well as the spacious Southwest, his compositions earning him accolade after accolade..

He is a landscape painter, who produces his paintings en plein air, out in the sun.

“In the light, outside, as Monet would have done; a french impression artist.”

He developed his techniques while going for a general education at Hartford highschool, attending many sessions at Wadsworth Atheneum and learning under the tutelage of artist Peter Waite.

He’s very proud of his compositions, joyous and eager to spread the spirit of nature and the world to a wider audience, those of which nature doesn’t speak to. It reinvents it and develops the beauty of the world in a new direction. If one cannot respect the visuals, they can, at the very least, respect the skill. Victor takes especially big pride in his series of treescapes: paintings of the same tree at different angles at the same time of day.

His painting “A Study in Hope” is a panoramic view of a hillside in Maine. A beautiful rendition of the sea and its many leagues, the white cotton candy clouds that seem to puff so perfectly overhead. Sprawling emerald grass as far as the eye can see. It was 15 hours worth of work, 5 different sittings, with three hours bursts of work in between.

Certainly an admirable work ethic!

“As a painter, I believe in starting with the furthest things first. I went out and drew all this in one sitting.” He says in an interview, gesturing at the painting. He would focus on blocking out the shapes, gesture drawing, to get an idea of what exactly goes where in the painting, then coming back each session to add details and tidy up.

He typically captures specimens at the times of days when the sun is highest in the sky and the early mornings, revisiting multiple times to complete sections of the paintings.

He mentioned in an interview observes trees as entities, encapsulations of some kind of humanistic or organic soul, their burly bodies stretching towards the sun eagerly looking to share their stories. Victor listens, enraptured, and paints their selfie, a snapshot of a beautiful day effortlessly bright.

He says he paints red leaved trees often because they seem to pop the best across a sky-blue background.

“[Trees] Definitely possess a spirit. They are an entity— other beings. They have large personalities. I want to put them center… like its a portrait of the tree.”

At present, Victor resides comfortably with his wife Marypat, in the house they designed and built together in 1988. Working as a teacher for art education, he currently spreads the word of the trees to the latest generation of artists, taking up work in the Torrington School District where he has been honored as Torrington's Teacher of the Year for 2010 as well as Secondary Art Educator for the State of Connecticut in 2015.

Another accomplishment he can add to his already sprawling resume.