Regal Artist

Born in the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, Regal Leftwich is an artist and architect who grew up in northern Virginia. 

 

He has developed his own unique style of painting he refers to as PI-OP, or Pigment Injected Oil Paintings and filed for a patent on the process in 2006.  He created the technique when living in Montreal, Canada, where the winters were harsh for someone who grew up in the South, and his process grew out of a necessity to use a traditionally dusty medium indoors during the winter months. His technique involves layering natural pigments and then excavating them back down, so each piece is inherently an act of creation and destruction. This unique process requires a drying time between 6 and 12 months for most of the pieces and creates a look and texture unlike any other painting process. 

 

Themes in Regal’s work often reflects his interests as an architect and draw from his Native American heritage, with themes that revolve around dichotomies of the natural/technological, ordered/unordered, traditional knowledge/scientific knowledge, and loss of culture in a rapidly globalized world. 

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His work has been collected and exhibited throughout the world. Collections can be found in the following cities: New York, London, Paris, Rome, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C.