About Leigh
Rolo (in tinfoil hat) and Leigh at home in 2013.
The birth, life, and death of the Cooney Brothers
I am an Irish-Canadian self-taught artist. Visually, I am heavily inspired by three artistic traditions: Cartooning, Medieval Religious Art, and Folk Art. Cartooning for its bold colours, often simplistic figurative style, and narrative nature; and Folk and Medieval Art for many of the same reasons, but more importantly for the relaxed approach to traditional artistic guidelines, and the unselfconscious and unpretentious nature of its practitioners. I prefer art that feels like it originates from a visceral rather than an academic idea. I believe some of history’s greatest painters have been downplayed for their stiffness in form, deceptive simplicity, and naïve or even “naïve” approach.
As a self-taught artist I don't feel comfortable with academic ideas of composition, colour use, or symbolism. My themes come to me from a very cerebral place, but my compositions come to me from the gut and I try first and foremost to take into consideration what feels natural, or what I term the "rhythm" of the work. In other words if it doesn’t feel “right” I rework it until it does. “Right” can sometimes involve proper perspective or traditional uses of colour and composition, but just as often it doesn’t. This allows me to develop a distinct style without relying on the novelty of being “distinct,” or "unique." Attributes which are, in my opinion, overrated.
For me painting has been very introspective and therapeutic. I was six years old when my family moved to Canada from Ireland, and we moved around a lot before settling down in Ontario when I was 12 years old. Struggling with an Irish accent and a severe case of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder that would go undiagnosed well into adulthood meant I had great difficulty communicating and I became increasingly shy, introverted, and inevitably bullied. This self-consciousness eventually turned into self-awareness and I began to appreciate the causes for cruelty amongst children and adults. I began even at this early stage to take a crude interest in psychology.
Sometimes I analyze my own occasionally regrettable actions, and sometimes I playfully analyze the actions of others. It's the person that we hide that interests me. A common theme in my paintings is childhood alienation; I revisit this subject time and again. It may not be groundbreaking, but I do feel that most of our fears, desires, and idiosyncrasies start as seeds in childhood and much healing and self-improvement can be gained by first recognizing this. Often the goal is for my paintings to act as a catalyst for this change in the viewer.
There are however, a number of other motifs I tackle regularly including the aforementioned attention disorder, as well as human sexuality, moral ambiguity, politics, fear, and especially the strict Irish Catholicism that both helped and hindered my childhood growth and through the muddied lense of which I still occasionally perceive my surroundings.
Just over two years ago I assumed a second identity, that of my “twin brother” Rolo Cooney. The goal of this experiment was two-fold. Firstly, I felt I had abandoned my goal of creating simple, crude, faux-naïve work. Instead I had started to dabble in a form of realism, and the success (in terms of sales and recognition) of this new, more palatable approach made it very difficult to revert. Secondly, since one of the major intentions of my work had always been to reveal our other distinct personalities, Rolo could be a manifestation of one of mine, and would therefore function as a real world art project wherein I would experiment with the perceptions of my work by producing two distinct styles, and then responding to people’s reactions to the work from the perspectives of two separate artists. This culminated in several photoshopped pictures of my “brother” and I on social media, a back story for Rolo involving a convenient fear of public appearances, and two gallery exhibitions of work by the Cooney Brothers.
However, late last year I recognized that my gut was telling me that despite the fact that the slick quasi-realist work I was originally doing was still selling well and getting me at least a minor amount of recognition (particularly in the US) I wasn’t happy following that line of work any longer. My true love was in the minimalist cartoon inspired work of my “brother” Rolo. As difficult as it was, I came out to the public as one painter, “killed” off my brother, and continued his work under my own name. Although this meant almost starting over and most certainly losing a large chunk of my fanbase, I recognized that creating meaningful work was immeasurably more important than financial or art world "success."
"
As a self-taught artist I don't feel comfortable with academic ideas of composition, colour use, or symbolism. My themes come to me from a very cerebral place, but my compositions come to me from the gut and I try first and foremost to take into consideration what feels natural, or what I term the "rhythm" of the work. In other words if it doesn’t feel “right” I rework it until it does. “Right” can sometimes involve proper perspective or traditional uses of colour and composition, but just as often it doesn’t. This allows me to develop a distinct style without relying on the novelty of being “distinct,” or "unique." Attributes which are, in my opinion, overrated.
For me painting has been very introspective and therapeutic. I was six years old when my family moved to Canada from Ireland, and we moved around a lot before settling down in Ontario when I was 12 years old. Struggling with an Irish accent and a severe case of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder that would go undiagnosed well into adulthood meant I had great difficulty communicating and I became increasingly shy, introverted, and inevitably bullied. This self-consciousness eventually turned into self-awareness and I began to appreciate the causes for cruelty amongst children and adults. I began even at this early stage to take a crude interest in psychology.
Sometimes I analyze my own occasionally regrettable actions, and sometimes I playfully analyze the actions of others. It's the person that we hide that interests me. A common theme in my paintings is childhood alienation; I revisit this subject time and again. It may not be groundbreaking, but I do feel that most of our fears, desires, and idiosyncrasies start as seeds in childhood and much healing and self-improvement can be gained by first recognizing this. Often the goal is for my paintings to act as a catalyst for this change in the viewer.
There are however, a number of other motifs I tackle regularly including the aforementioned attention disorder, as well as human sexuality, moral ambiguity, politics, fear, and especially the strict Irish Catholicism that both helped and hindered my childhood growth and through the muddied lense of which I still occasionally perceive my surroundings.
Just over two years ago I assumed a second identity, that of my “twin brother” Rolo Cooney. The goal of this experiment was two-fold. Firstly, I felt I had abandoned my goal of creating simple, crude, faux-naïve work. Instead I had started to dabble in a form of realism, and the success (in terms of sales and recognition) of this new, more palatable approach made it very difficult to revert. Secondly, since one of the major intentions of my work had always been to reveal our other distinct personalities, Rolo could be a manifestation of one of mine, and would therefore function as a real world art project wherein I would experiment with the perceptions of my work by producing two distinct styles, and then responding to people’s reactions to the work from the perspectives of two separate artists. This culminated in several photoshopped pictures of my “brother” and I on social media, a back story for Rolo involving a convenient fear of public appearances, and two gallery exhibitions of work by the Cooney Brothers.
However, late last year I recognized that my gut was telling me that despite the fact that the slick quasi-realist work I was originally doing was still selling well and getting me at least a minor amount of recognition (particularly in the US) I wasn’t happy following that line of work any longer. My true love was in the minimalist cartoon inspired work of my “brother” Rolo. As difficult as it was, I came out to the public as one painter, “killed” off my brother, and continued his work under my own name. Although this meant almost starting over and most certainly losing a large chunk of my fanbase, I recognized that creating meaningful work was immeasurably more important than financial or art world "success."
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