Painter of People: Mel Leipzig

Mel Leipzig paints people in their everyday environments. Now 86 years young, Mel Leipzig has been painting for over 67 years and still finds passion in developing his painting skills and connecting with his community. Margaret M. O'Reilly, the executive director and curator at the New Jersey State Museum, has studied Mel and his impact on the art world and his own communities.
In her essay, Mel Leipzig: Picturing People, O'Reilly provides great insight into the life, inspiration, and works of the artist.
"His paintings are a memoir; portraits of himself, his friends, colleagues, and the life he has created in the metropolitan region around his home in Trenton, NJ.
Leipzig set out to be a realist painter, with a particular passion for the figure. However, at the Cooper Union and Yale University in the 1950s, his commitment to realism and the figure was challenged by several professors including Morris Kantor, Nicholas Marsicano and Josef Albers, who discouraged his vision, instead advocating for abstract expressionism and non-objective painting. After some struggle to come to terms with the advice he was receiving, Leipzig committed himself to the figure and realism.
Gifted with an innate ability for composition, he has always worked directly from life. Leipzig depicts the inhabitants of the broad and diverse community of which he is an integral part. Sitters from all walks of life – students, coaches, politicians, graffiti artists, retirees – are all treated alike, with dignity and respect for their humanity... This affection sometimes appears in tender portraits of personal moments. More often however, the figures seem at a remove from the viewer, as if the act of being painted has allowed for a moment of self-reflection. This remove may also be the manifestation of the painter’s immersion in the act of painting itself. " -Excerpts from Margaret O'Reilly's Essay, Mel Leipzig: Picturing People