Ember Serenity Day

In *Ember Serenity Day*, Simone distils the charged stillness of a landscape into a luminous field of colour and breath. Layered passages—built through measured glazing, softened edges, and confident tonal shifts—create a sense of atmosphere that feels both observed and remembered.

Warm ember hues pulse against quieter intervals of pale light, guiding the eye across the surface and producing a gentle, expansive depth. The composition balances restraint with intensity: a disciplined structure holds the painting’s emotional temperature, allowing subtle transitions to carry the work’s drama.

Significant within Simone’s practice, the piece demonstrates a refined command of colour as subject—where serenity is not passive, but earned through tension, heat, and release. The result is an image that lingers, radiating calm while retaining a quiet, elemental power.

Simone Leigh (born 1967) is an American artist from Chicago with a studio in Brooklyn. She works in various media including sculpture, installations, video, performance, and social practice. Leigh has described her work as auto-ethnographic, and her interests include African art and vernacular objects, performance, and feminism.

Her work is concerned with the marginalization of women of color and reframes their experience as central to society. Leigh has said that her work is focused on "Black female subjectivity," with an interest in complex interplays between various strands of history.

She …