UPCOMING EXHIBITION: TRUE NORTH, LEIGH ROYER SOLO EXHIBITION

Stevenson & Co. is pleased to present True North, a solo exhibition of new work by Leigh Royer, on view November 4 through November 30, 2026.

Royer is an artist in near-constant motion. Travel, observation, and study are fundamental to her practice, and True North brings together works informed by journeys through Morocco, Portugal, Paris, Cape Cod, Nantucket, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Alaska. These places are not presented as destinations so much as absorbed and reconsidered—carried back into the studio and reconstructed through oil and soft pastel.

That movement extends to Royer’s studio practice itself. With an enthusiastic dedication to her craft, she is continually studying, experimenting, and adding new layers to her visual language. Pastel and oil operate in conversation: one sharpening her attention to immediacy, color, and touch; the other allowing images to develop through accumulation, revision, and time. Each medium informs the next.

In True North, geography becomes less a subject than a means of orientation. Across markedly different surroundings, Royer returns to certain visual instincts—color relationships, atmospheric shifts, spatial rhythms, and the persistent structure of the horizon. The exhibition traces an artist looking outward while continually refining the language through which she understands what she sees.

Royer studied fine art and industrial design at Pratt Institute and spent fifteen years in New York working in product design before devoting herself fully to painting. Now based in Charleston, her practice is shaped by movement, sustained observation, and a continual curiosity about what her materials might make possible.

A Collector Preview will be held Wednesday, November 4, from 5–7 PM. To request an invitation, please contact the gallery directly. The exhibition will open to the public Friday, November 6, from 5–8 PM, in conjunction with the Charleston Gallery Association First Friday Artwalk. True North remains on view through November 30, 2026.

Leigh Royer is a Charleston-based painter whose practice is grounded primarily in landscape. She holds a BA in Fine Arts and a master’s degree in Industrial Design and spent fifteen years in New York City working in product design and development before relocating to Charleston, South Carolina, to devote herself fully to painting.

Working in oil, watercolor, and soft pastel—with pastel at the center of her practice—Royer draws extensively from travel and from sustained observation of coastal, urban, and natural environments. Her largely representational work begins with the particularities of place but is shaped by an ongoing process of reduction, interpretation, and revision. Whether working en plein air or in the studio, she is especially attentive to light, color, atmosphere, and the immediacy of a given moment. Rather than rendering a location literally, Royer edits toward what she considers essential to the composition, using energetic marks and heightened color to evoke the experience and emotional tenor of a place.

Royer is a member of the Pastel Society of Cape Cod, Pastel Society of South Carolina, Piedmont Pastel Society, Southeastern Pastel Society, and the International Association of Pastel Societies. She is also affiliated with the Artists Association of Nantucket, Preserving a Picturesque America, the Charleston Artist Guild, and the Mount Pleasant Artists Guild.