Biography

Leah Wilson develops long-term artistic investigations into environmental change as it unfolds through time. Wilson’s practice brings together ecological research and embodied experience through sustained attention to place, making long-term attention her methodology and environmental change her subject. Painting, drawing, and layered relief sculpture function as forms of sustained attention that exist in dialogue with ecological research while offering distinct ways of understanding environmental change.

An early residency at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest initiated an artistic inquiry that has continued for nearly two decades. Drawn to the Andrews Forest’s culture of long-term ecological research, Wilson recognized a parallel to her own commitment to sustained artistic inquiry and returned year after year to develop an independent body of work rooted in the landscape. The Andrews Forest remains the foundation of her practice, informed by sustained field observation and ongoing dialogue with ecologists studying landscape change.

Decades of returning to rivers and wilderness landscapes established an embodied understanding of place that continues to shape her artistic methodology. Her early work examining environmental decision-making during the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission relicensing of her home watershed established the methodological foundation for a practice centered on translating lived ecological experience into visual form.

Wilson is currently a PRAx Redcedar Fellow, and her current projects are developed through sustained conversation with ecologists, conservation organizations, and long-term research institutions across the American West. Her work is held in public and private collections, including the Percent for Art Collection of the State of Oregon, and has been exhibited throughout the West Coast.

Wilson lives in Eugene, Oregon, and teaches art at Oregon State University.

Artist Statement

My work investigates environmental change through long-term relationships with specific places. I return to the same forests, rivers, deserts, and watersheds over years and often decades, allowing sustained attention to become both my artistic methodology and a way of understanding landscapes that cannot be grasped through brief observation alone.

Painting, drawing, and layered relief sculpture are the primary forms through which I translate these experiences. They allow embodied observation, ecological research, memory, and material process to coexist without reducing one to the other. Rather than illustrating scientific knowledge, I work alongside it. Long-term conversations with ecologists continually reshape what I notice, revealing processes of disturbance, succession, hydrology, climate, and deep time that gradually become part of my visual language.

The work develops through repeated field visits, walking, climbing, paddling, drawing, and careful observation. I often make my own paints, incorporating pigments gathered from the landscapes themselves so that material and subject remain connected. Every decision—from the behavior of a pigment to the scale of a relief sculpture—becomes part of an inquiry into how environmental change can be experienced rather than simply represented.

I am interested in forms of change that unfold too slowly for ordinary perception: rivers shifting course, forests responding to disturbance, desert ecosystems adapting to drought, and geological processes extending beyond a human lifetime. Art offers a different mode of attention than science, creating space for ambiguity, wonder, and lived experience while remaining grounded in careful observation. My practice seeks to create work that deepens our capacity to perceive ecological relationships and our place within them.

Curriculum Vitae

Solo, Two & Three Person Exhibitions

Rhythms of Timbre, Patricia Reser Center for the Arts (The Reser), Beaverton, OR (Two Person), 2026
Seeing a River, Truckenbrod Gallery, Corvallis, OR (Three Person), 2023
Stories Told by Water, Red Door Gallery, Umpqua Valley Arts, Roseburg, OR (Solo), 2021
Time and Place: Ecological Works by Leah Wilson, At Liberty Arts, Bend, OR (Solo), 2019
Collecting Evanescence, Lane Community College, Main Gallery, Eugene, OR (Solo), 2019
Collecting Evanescence, Truckenbrod Gallery, Corvallis, OR (Solo), 2018
Solstices and Equinoxes: Paintings by Leah Wilson, Roger W. Rogers Gallery, Willamette University, Salem, OR (Solo), 2017
Leah Wilson: Ambient, Umpqua Valley Arts Center, Roseburg, OR (Solo), 2015
The Structure of Nature, The Arts Center, Corvallis, OR (Two Person), 2014
Leah Wilson: Distillations of Place, Cascade Gallery, Portland, OR (Solo), 2013
Guardino Gallery, Portland, OR (Two Person), 2010
Tropes, Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts, Eugene, OR (Solo), 2009
Shifting Landscapes, Los Medanos College, Pittsburg, CA (Two Person), 2006
Yuba Songs, Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival, Nevada City, CA (Solo), 2006
Love Poems to the Yuba, 560, Nevada City, CA (Solo), 2005 Internal, Howard Rice, San Francisco, CA (Solo), 2002
New Works, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, CA (Solo), 2000

Collaborative & Public Art

Listening to the Forest, Percent for Art, Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon State University, George W. Peavy Forest Science Center, Corvallis, OR, 2020
Metanoia Catalyst, BRIDGE Exhibition, Hult Center Plaza, Eugene, OR (Leah Wilson & Kate Ali), 2018
Gray Space, Founding Member, Eugene, Corvallis & Roseburg, OR 2016 – Present

Selected Group Exhibitions

Visual Echoes, Scalehouse Annex, Bend, OR, 2026
Climate of Change, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Portland, OR, 2026-2027
The Birth of Cascadia, Oregon Origins Project VI, Stelo, Portland, OR, 2025
The Birth of Cascadia, Oregon Origins Project VI (Performance), The Reser Center for the Arts, Beaverton, OR, 2025
Wildfire + Water, The Arts Center, Corvallis, OR, 2025
This is the Land the Sunset Washes, President’s Residence, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, 2024-2025
Faculty Exhibition, Fairbanks Gallery, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, 2024-2025
Wildfire+Water, Playa, Summer Lake, OR, 2024
Roundhouse Foundation Presents: Featured Artists from the PMRCAA Residency Program, Pendleton Center for the Arts, Pendleton, OR, 2022
Embodied Forest, EcoArtSpace, 2021
Reflections: OPEN, Anti-Aesthetic Gallery, Eugene Contemporary Art & BRIDGE Exhibitions, Eugene, OR, 2020
Common Ground, Anti-Aesthetic Gallery, Eugene Contemporary Art, Eugene, OR, 2020
Divergence, At Liberty Arts, Bend, OR, 2019
Gray Space and Tailgate Party for Art, Eugene Contemporary Art, Eugene, OR, 2018
Rot: The Afterlife of Trees, The World Forestry Center, Portland, OR, 2016
Rot: The Afterlife of Trees, The Arts Center, Corvallis, OR, 2016
The Art of Plankton, The Arts Center, Corvallis, OR, 2012
Green, Green the Color of New, David Joyce Gallery, Lane Community College, Eugene, OR, 2012
Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival, Nevada City, CA, 2008
Below the Surface, Fly Trap Gallery, Sacramento, CA, 2005
Small Works, Julie Baker Fine Art, Grass Valley, CA, 2004
Small Works, Oakland Art Gallery, Oakland, CA, 2004
River Lovers, Lotus Art Studio, Lotus, CA, 2004
Spring!, Julie Baker Fine Art, Grass Valley, CA, 2004
Close Calls, Headlands Center for the Arts, Project Space East/West, Sausalito, CA, 2004
San Francisco Art Institute Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, Fort Mason, Herbst Pavilion, San Francisco, CA, 2003
Continuing, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2002 Slack Jaw, Studio Z, San Francisco, CA, 2002
Crossing Bridges, CBS MarketWatch, San Francisco, CA, 2002
Ambulatory Gambit, Sunnyside Conservatory, San Francisco, CA, 2002
Berührungsangst, 701 Chestnut, San Francisco, CA, 2001
Magnificent Seven, Café Roma, Davis, CA, 2001
Spring Show, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, 2001 Me We, Justice League, San Francisco, CA, 2001
Pigmentations, Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, CA, 2001
Annual Alumni Exhibition, Art Institute of Southern California, Laguna Beach, CA, 2000
That Figures, Long Beach Arts, Long Beach, CA, 1998
Annual Alumni Exhibition, Art Institute of Southern California, Laguna Beach, CA, 1998
Unusual Perceptions, Hello Artichoke Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, 1997
Annual Alumni Exhibition, Art Institute of Southern California, Laguna Beach, CA, 1997
The Really Big Show, Long Beach Arts, Long Beach, CA, 1997
Southern California Open Juried Exhibition, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA, 1997
Centered on the Center, Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, CA, 1996
Thirteen After Four, Artegeo, Orange, CA, 1994

Collections

State of Oregon Percent for Art Collection, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
PacificSource, Springfield, OR
Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, OR
Oregon State University, HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, Blue River, OR
Adobe Systems, Inc., Frankfurt, Germany
Adobe Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA
eBay, Inc., San Jose, CA
Namco Hometek, Inc., Santa Clara, CA
Hinshaw & Culbertson, LLP, San Francisco, CA

Essays

“Meditations on Geometries of Water: Summer Lake“, ARTerrain, Terrain.org, May 22, 2026
“Robert Varela offers a whimsical ascent into isolation”, Critical MAS, Eugene Contemporary Art, August, 2020
“Kathleen Caprario’s seductively beautiful painting lures into thorny landscapes”, Critical MAS, Eugene Contemporary Art, August, 2019
“Discovery Trail” ROT: The Afterlife of Trees, Exhibition Catalog, The Arts Center, January, 2016

Grants & Residencies

Redcedar Fellowship, PRAx, 2006 – 2008
Artist-At-Large, Permanent Resident Artist, HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, OR, Ongoing
Artist in Residence, Oregon Desert Land Trust, Trout Creek Ranch, Fields, OR, 2026
Artist in Residence, “Wildfire+Water,” Playa, Summer Lake, OR, 2023
Oregon Sea Grant, 2023
Artist in Residence, Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, North Woodstock, NH, 2023
Artist in Residence, Pine Meadow Ranch, Sisters, OR, 2022
Artist in Residence, Pine Meadow Ranch, Sisters, OR, 2021
Oregon Opportunity Grant, Oregon Arts Commission & Ford Family Foundation, 2021
Artist in Residence, HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, OR, 2012

Bibliography

Campbell, Brett, “Oregon Origins Project: Evoking Oregon’s history and landscape through art,” Oregon ArtsWatch, 2025
Tesner, Linda, “Imagining Geological Time in Oregon,” Oregon Origins Project VI: The Birth of Cascadia, 2025
Weintraub, Linda, “Post-Anthropocentric Creativity,” Center for Sustainable Practices Journal, Q38, 2023
Topozone (Raechel Root & Joseph Sussi), “Geo-graphing the Unseen: Writing, Reading, and Reimagining Landscapes” Eugene Contemporary Art, October 20, 2020
McInally, Mike, “’Evanescence’ at the Intersection of Art, Science” The Corvallis Gazette-Times, October 4, 2018
Fourie, Andries, “Solstices and Equinoxes: Paintings by Leah Wilson” Roger W. Rogers Gallery, January, 2017
Sherk, Christine, “Outside the Lines, Nature as Muse” The Register-Guard, April 4, 2012
Keefer, Bob, “Trash Runs Through It,” The Register-Guard, July 16, 2009
Steffen, Suzi, “Colored by Science,” Eugene Weekly, July 16, 2009
Chamberland, Celeste, “On the Cutting Edge,” The Davis Enterprise, August 16, 2001

Professional Presentations, Events & Community

Artist Talk, Wandering Stars, Conversation with Clayton Binkley, Peavy Forest Science Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, April 21, 2026
Artist Talk, The Beauty of Structure, Conversation with Sally Finch, Patricia Reser Center for the Arts (The Reser), Beaverton, OR, February 21, 2026
Professional Presenter, Fireline Gathering, HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, Blue River, OR, 2025
Artist Lecture, ART 462/562, Oregon State University, October, 2025
Podcast, The Crossing: Bill Viola, “Luminaries,” Spring Creek Project, 2024
Presenter, The Journey of a Science-Curious Artist Through Landscapes of Inquiry, “Artistic Pathways to Scientific Understanding,” Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation Conference, Portland, OR, November 17, 2023
Panelist, Seeing a River: Two Artists & a Scientist, Truckenbrod Gallery, Corvallis, OR, February 3, 2023
Panelist, Art-Sci at Long-Term Ecological Field Stations, Museum of the White Mountains, Plymouth, NH, January 26, 2023
Guest Speaker, Ten Years of Collecting Evanescence at HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, Integration of Art and Science at Long-Term Ecological Field Stations, Hubbard Brook LTER, North Woodstock, NH, January 25, 2023
Artist Lecture, JumpstART, Corvallis, OR, June, 2023
Artist Lecture, ART 462/562, Oregon State University, November, 2023
Artist Lecture, ART 101, Oregon State University, November, 2023
Guest Speaker, Response, John Grade’s Emeritus Reception, Oregon State University, October 28, 2022
Guest Lecturer, Creative Coast, Oregon State University, Field Course, June, 2022
Visiting Reviewer, Mine/Seed Studio, School of Architecture & Environment, Department of Landscape Architecture University of Oregon, 2022
Artist Talk, Stories Told by Water, Umpqua Valley Arts, Roseburg, OR, August 5, 2021
Presenter: Tree Talk: Artists Speak for Trees, Moderated by Sant Khalsa, Co-Hosted by EcoArtSpace & the Joshua Tree Center for Photographic Arts, May 20, 2021
Webinar: Listening to the Forest, Moderated by Brooke Penaluna, Hosted by the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Long-Term Ecological Research program, the OSU College of Forestry, and The Spring Creek Project for Nature and the Written Word, May 12, 2021
Panelist, Overlook Lecture Series: Recovery, Fuller Center for Productive Landscapes, University of Oregon, April 30, 2021
Lecturer, Collaborating with Time, a conversation with Steve Wondzell, What Will Nature Do? Lecture Series Part Two: Artists and Their Artistic Practices with Science: Lessons Learned During the Process, Co-Sponsored by the Corvallis Arts Center, Oregon State University Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering & OSU Art-Sci, April 20, 2021
Guest Lecturer, Dancing with Ignorance & Collecting Evanescence, Environmental Communication Theory, University of Oregon, November 25, 2020
Presenter, Listening to the Forest, Arts-Sci at OSU, Oregon State University, November 10, 2020
Guest Lecturer, Place as Collaborator, Corvallis Art Guild, November 2, 2020
Guest Lecturer, Art of the Microbiome, Oregon State University, February 6, 2020
Panelist, Time and Place: Ecological Works by Leah Wilson, Moderated by Andries Fourie with Dr. Brooke Penaluna (research fish biologist with Pacific Northwest Research Station, U.S.D.A. Forest Service) Dr. Michael Nelson (a philosopher and economist who is Oregon State’s lead principal investigator at Andrews) and Louise Shirley (Curator of Natural History at the High Desert Museum). The discussion provided context for the artwork and explored the convergence of art and science as ways of investigating the natural world, At Liberty Gallery, November 16, 2019
Professional Presenter, Collecting Evanescence: Seven Years at the Andrews, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, November 1, 2019
Panelist, Divergence (Beauty), At Liberty Arts, Bend, OR, July 6, 2019
Panelist, Making Your Own Way: Strategies for Building Visibility, Lane Arts Council, Eugene, Oregon, 2019
Guest Lecturer, Imagining Ecosystems Over Time, Environmental Arts and Humanities Field Course, Oregon State University, September, 2016
Professional Presenter, Art-Science Convergences at OSU, Spring Creek Project, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, April 7, 2016
Professional Presenter, Science Pub, Corvallis, OR, November 9, 2015
Professional Presenter, Artists: Voices, Perceptions, & Motivations, Real Time Data Visualizations: A 21st Century Confluence of Art, Music and Science at Ecological Research Sites, Hubbard Brook LTER, NH, November 5, 2015
Professional Presenter, HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, HJA Day, June 25, 2015 Invited Artist,
Honoring Our Rivers Anthology, 2015
Professional Presenter, HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, HJA Day, June 26, 2014
Professional Presenter, Portland Community College, Cascade Campus, November 14, 2013
Guest Artist, Willamette Riverkeeper, Paddle Oregon, 2010

Featured Publications

CounterBound, September 2020
Terra, Spring 2019
Oregon Historical Quarterly, Winter 2018/2019 (Artwork featured on the front and back covers)

Professional Community Engagement

Mentor/Facilitator, Art-Sci Fellowship Retreat, PRAx, PLAYA, Summer Lake, OR, 2026
Reviewer, Forest Data Jam Project, Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, Woodstock, NH, 2026
Curator, Water, OMSI, PRAx at OMSI, Portland, OR, 2026
Selection Advisory Committee, LTEReflections Residency, Spring Creek Project, PRAx, Oregon State University, 2026
Selection Advisory Committee, Fireline Fellowship, Spring Creek Project, PRAx, Oregon State University, 2024
Art/Sci Advisor, “Ecotones,” Organization of Biological Field Stations, Charlottesville, VA, 2023
Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest ArtSci Advisory Committee, North Woodstock, NH, 2023
Advisor & Mentor, Art-Sci Student Fellowship, Oregon State University, 2022 – Present
Selection Panel, Oregon Arts Commission, Withycombe Hall, Oregon State University, OR, 2022
Emeritus, John Grade Installation, Assistant Tree Climber, Oregon State University, 2022
Arts Advisory Committee, Roundhouse Foundation and Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture, 2021 – Present
Board Member, Eugene Contemporary Art, 2020 – 2022
Arts Residency Advisory Committee, HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, 2019 – Present
Artist Member, Eugene Contemporary Art, 2019 – Present
Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest WaterViz Workshop, 2016

Teaching

Oregon State University, 2023 – present
Lane Community College, 2019 – 2022

Workshops

“Expressive Drawing,” The Arts Center, Corvallis, OR, July – August, 2026 (upcoming)
“Exploring Color,” The Arts Center, Corvallis, OR, July, 2026 (upcoming)
“Exploring Color,” The Arts Center, Corvallis, OR, July, 2025