Donnalynne Lefever

Background

Donnalynne Lefever was born in Northern Virginia.  Always fond of the arts, she worked in the Theater field for several years where she earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University of Maryland in 1985.  Shortly after graduating she moved to New York City where she made costumes for Broadway including Cats, Song & Dance, Starlight Express, Phantom of the Opera and the Joffrey Ballet Co. to name a few.

When she moved back to Northern VA, she met a designer who inspired her to paint faux finishes and murals in which she currently has a business in the Metropolitan Washington DC area. She is the owner of Lefever Designs which has been in business now for over 25 years. She creates faux finishes, murals, tromp l’oiel, leafing and artwork of any kind in homes and businesses on the walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, etc.  She works mainly with designers (ones she has a consistent relationship with or has been introduced to by her clients) and by word of mouth.

In the late 1980’s, she started taking art classes at Northern Virginia Community College Alexandria Campus. Since then, she has taken workshops and classes from Robert Venosa & Martina Hoffmann, Alex Grey, Rob Vander Zee, Gwen Bragg, Jeanne Tifft and Laurence Caruana. She also took a 3 month class at the Visionary Art School in Vienna Austria in 2013 with staff of Laurence Caruana, Aloria Weaver and David Heskin. And she still takes various painting classes to continue to hone her skills.

In her original art creations, her favorite materials to use are oils, acrylic, any kind of leafing, pen & ink, conte, mixed media and photography.  The style in her work varies from visionary, abstract, representational, spiritual and or figurative. She has received many awards at juried shows. She is an active member of the Springfield Art Guild. Her artwork can also be seen in Occoquan, VA at Art a La Carte Gallery.

Her faux and decorative finishes have been published in the magazine Washington Spaces summer 2007.  Monkeysee.com has videos of her tips and tricks for faux finishing which can also be found on YouTube today.

Philosophy

Music, theater and costumes inspired me from a young age and later I got my hands dirty with clay, paint, leafing and photography.  These mediums as well as delving into the visionary art world have inspired me to explore the unusual, the dream world, the archetypes and the imagination.  I’ve always been attracted to the bizarre and different in the world and that shows up in my artwork and photography.  My artwork can be more spontaneous or planned depending on the approach I want to take. I also create abstracts and often use in those pieces some of the same glazing techniques I use for my other paintings giving my art depth. 

Experimenting with paint brings me into a playful mind space.  Texture, metallic paints and leafing appear frequently in my artwork as they add both life and substance.  Another approach I like to use in my painting is visual texture.  This often takes me to the place of creating illusions.  I see faces, creatures and energies in nature all the time and not surprising they play on my canvases as well.   I inherently pull out the energies already there on the canvas waiting to come into reality.  The exploration of not knowing where I’m going with a piece and letting the process direct me towards completion gives me great satisfaction.