Image: Leigh Hewitt, Val 2021, acrylic on board. Image courtesy the artist.

Wagga Wagga based artist Leigh Hewitt takes up the first of the Gallery’s RAD residencies in the E3 Art Space. As a representational oil painter who explores realism through portraiture and still life, Leigh's works are a mixture of the traditional and the surprising, often looking at human character and the ephemera of everyday life.

During Leigh's Regional Artist Development (RAD) - Residency, he will be working on large scale portraits for an upcoming exhibition titled Buoy, to be exhibited at the Curious Rabbit in mid-2022. Leigh will engage with the local community through inviting sitters in to capture the stories that buoyed Wagga Wagga residents through the isolation and other changes in lifestyle resulting from COVID-19 restrictions, counteracting the 'doom and gloom' with hope.