Monique paints with deep tone and vivid feel in her horizon line abstracts. She manipulates color and line to move the eye to, and beyond, the horizon – evoking open air, the feel of wind in the face, the smell of life in water and earth, and the sheer majesty of looking far to the edge, and beyond.

“I am a painter of the what we all feel when standing at the edge of the ocean, looking out across the aquas and greens, taking into the soul the vastness of the water and the limitlessness of the horizon, and knowing the insignificance of our individual joys and sorrows.”

She recently has painted aspects of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from the skylight of the Robert Lehman Gallery, to the perspectives of MOMA hallways leading to classic art works.

Her paintings of dancers and women show the curves and colors of the physical body using the process of sgraffito, or scraping on deepening layers of blues, purples, and grays without the use of brushes, which gives life and depth to an otherwise flat dimension.

Many of Monique’s paintings require an intense process. Monique tapes, caulks, adjusts, re-tapes, and then paints at least three layers to get vivid, true color in her horizon paintings. She scrapes and layers the paint for her physical form and MOMA paintings.

She maintains a studio in New York City and North Yarmouth, Maine.

Ms. Leahy also is an attorney. “My professional life has been creating with words. It is exhilarating to be able to now create in paint whenever I want.”