Hi, my name is Leia! I'm a first-generation New Yorker, born, raised, and based in Queens!
My love for art started before I even understood what it was!
In my early days of crawling around speaking only Russian and Greek in Astoria, my parents handed me chalk and crayons and allowed me to freely color all over the floors and walls.
Then, when I was 3, I moved to a small beach town, called Rockaway Beach, which may sound familiar if you know the Ramones song, into an apartment that is less than a minute's walk away from the ocean.
It was here that I fell in love with nature, my biggest source of comfort and inspiration. With the clouds and stars and the ocean and all its little critters. With the quiet serenity that came with the natural world, with the bugs under my rocks, and the fun that we discovered in a technology-free childhood. But also still a part of bustling NYC, a beautifully diverse and ever-changing city!
I recently graduated from FIT with a BFA in Illustration, and have an everlasting desire to capture that pure, irreplaceable nostalgia experienced in childhood through my art, and wish to give people a place of comfort where they can find themselves, with hope of reaching others with that same sense of nostalgia, curiosity, and wonder!