Living in England, Genevieve Leavold has always been a painter however, as life often does, she has crossed many industries. For a while, she was a Personal Assistant, to various company directors. She had also trained in theatre design at a small Theatre college on the southeast coast in a town called Worthing. Studying theatre design taught Leavold to learn and love the process, particularly as during set design she could spend hours and hours making designs and this is where she learnt never to get too precious, as ultimately this would be broken down when the show had finished. It was when she was 34 in 2014 that she decided to begin painting full-time.

 “I remember once spending hours painstakingly recreating and hand painting a 1950s advertisement for a show, only to have to smash it up after the opening night because the stage manager had miscalculated the size of the stage and it wouldn’t fit.  It was a humbling experience that has helped me many times when I get uptight about a painting.”

The process can take a while to get comfortable and know how her instinct will take her. Over time she has become more of a morning bloomer, although when building a new work she can become locked on the building passion, working all day and evening until her eyes become too tired to paint. Genevieve Leavold will regularly work on 3 canvases at once, each allowing a different stage of drying. Typically working in silence or listening to something she knows so well that she is not distracted by thoughts or the need to dance when music plays, when she is warming up she will listen to Alan Watts lectures or ambient music.