Each painting captures a small piece of life worth celebrating.
When artist Wyatt LeGrand puts his brush to canvas, he’s preserving the moments, places and people that have impacted him greatly over time. Portraits of his grandparents and his wife expose how important those people have been to him. The houses and landscapes of southwestern Indiana are depicted in bold color.
His grandmother’s yellow roses — which he still cares for — show up repeatedly.
“I tried to pick a group of paintings that were sentimental, which is something that sometimes established professional artists try to avoid. There’s this philosophy that it doesn’t matter what you paint, as long as you paint it well,” he said. “I’ve kind of figured out that I paint things well that I have an attachment to. There’s an emotional tie to it.”
LeGrand is sharing these sentimental glimpses through his artwork, which will be on display at the Southside Art League’s Off Broadway Gallery throughout the month of October. From slivers of life living in rural Indiana to grandiose vistas of the American West to quiet portraits of his wife, the Bloomfield resident hopes to offer those who see his work something beyond just a visual representation.
“I hope they see that sentimental part of it, not just painting things at random, because they appeal aesthetically. I’m trying to capture something that maybe a photograph doesn’t quite get,” he said.
LeGrand’s work is currently showing at the gallery. An open house and reception for the exhibition will be 6 to 8 p.m. today.
Growing up in a small rural Indiana town, LeGrand was drawn to art as a way to express himself. After graduating from high school in 2005, he enrolled at Indiana University to work on a degree in art education. While attending the school, he took a painting class, something he really enjoyed.
“After I graduated, I couldn’t find a teaching position immediately, so I began painting more,” he said.
LeGrand found encouragement and support from his grandmother, who suggested he take part in a plein air event. Participants gathered at the T.C. Steele State Historic Site near Nashville to set up their easels and paint what they saw.
The experience was eye-opening.
“It ended up being successful for me. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll continue doing this for a little while,” he said.
Entering numerous plein air events and competitions, LeGrand honed his painting skills. He traveled the country, capturing landscapes and small towns in the West. Along the way, he encountered interesting people and painted them as well.
Eventually, he moved back to Bloomfield, and opened LeGrand Art Studio & Gallery, before landing a teaching job. He and his family still live in Bloomfield, where LeGrand teaches art to middle and high school students.
“As a representational painter, like I am, the whole name of the game was trying to make a picture that looked like what I was looking at,” he said. “That took a while. But then once I felt fairly accomplished at that, the past few years are chasing the subjects that are appealing to me, and trying to depict those subjects that are representative of me.”
Throughout his career, LeGrand has found success at competitions around the country, including being named best of show in the 2019 and 2017 Indiana Plein Air Painters’ First Brush of Spring event, as well as in the 2018 Brown County Art Guild Plein Air exhibit. Plein Air Magazine named him one of the best painters under 30 in 2014.
His work is also represented at the Brown County Art Guild gallery in Nashville, Juniper Gallery in Spencer and Castle Gallery in Fort Wayne.
To be able to present these paintings in events such as this, as well as to the Johnson County community at the Southside Art League, is an exciting opportunity for LeGrand to share work that means so much to him.
“The painting, the finished artifact that everyone is going to see, those are not really the point of it for me. The point of it is deciding to paint it, when a photo would suffice,” he said.
