Born 1979

Leah Raintree is an artist based in Richmond, VA and Brooklyn, NY.  Her practice focuses on the human connection to earth, with an interest in how we frame and experience time, matter, scale, and phenomena. Her work is rooted in an experimental drawing practice that spans media, with projects developing through a combination of process-based mark-making and direct engagement with materiality and place. She primarily works across drawing, ceramic, and photographic processes, often using site-specific materials to explore our interconnection with the planet. These investigations occur at the scale of the body, revealing interrelationships between human and geologic scales. Raintree’s childhood was spent on a small farm in rural Virginia, and she often returns to the process of “touching earth” as the cornerstone of her practice. 

Raintree has held four solo exhibitions with Reynolds Gallery (Richmond, VA) and has exhibited with cultural and academic institutions such as the Noguchi Museum (Queens, NY), High Line Art (New York, NY), and the Staniar Gallery at Washington & Lee University (Lexington, VA). She has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships including from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace and Process Space (New York, NY), Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium), the Banff Centre (Canada), and the Lower East Side Printshop (New York, NY). Raintree holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA from Parsons School of Design.