Considered one of Britain’s leading photorealist painters, Michael Leonard depicts nudes in various stages of dressing, undressing, and bathing. Working from his own photographs and pencil figure studies, Leonard captures the sensuous forms of the body with luminous paint effects and precise brushwork. As in the dynamic compositions of Edgar Degas’s Bathers, Leonard paints from cropped and angled perspectives, taking the position of the voyeur. “My pictures marry observed reality with abstract values and are often enriched with personal subtexts or echoes of the work of great artists I admire,” he has said.