Leanna Dayle is a self-taught portrait artist based in Fredericksburg, VA. Raised in Oregon, she completed her undergrad in Geography at Portland State University before moving overseas. After volunteering for a year in southeast Africa and teaching English for a year in South Korea, she moved to Virginia in 2020 and currently works as a custom framer.

Leanna’s artistic journey began in 2017 during her yearlong service trip to Mozambique. Limited internet access and dependency on solar power created the need for a more traditional means of entertainment, and she began experimenting with the paint and drawing supplies in the school she was volunteering at. After initial practice drawing some of the African wildlife, she transitioned to drawing her friends and neighbors. She has a great love for drawing eyes and the reflections they cast, for wrinkles and facial detail, and for the brightly colored headwraps that the women she met in Mozambique would wear.

More recently, her artistic inclination has migrated to winged wildlife. This new fascination has led to a mixed collection of fearsome black-and-white raptors, and sweet, colorful songbirds.