Leni Paquet-Morante : studio 16

Léni Paquet-Morante (1962) was born in Canada, raised in Maryland, and has been living and working in New Jersey since arriving in 1984 for an apprenticeship at the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture. Her studio is in the Motor Exhibit Building at Grounds for Sculpture.

Léni is primarily a studio-based painter, relying on sketches, photographs, and sensory memory for an evocative rendition of landscape through painterly brush stroke. Her sculptural work in metals and clay has also referenced landscape.

“I have been interpreting landscape through both two- and three-dimensional work for a long time, and it has been an abstraction of those forms and light that interested me most. I approach light as tangible and therefore malleable. For the last few years I have been inspired by the places that have lured my immediate attention and been evocative. Most often these are along my daily commute, trips to public parks in and near my home in New Jersey, and in the rural Maryland landscape where I was raised under a canopy of trees.”

In 1986 Léni was awarded an Artist in Education Grant from the Maryland State Council on the Arts and was commissioned to complete a large bronze sculpture for Walt Whitman High School. She earned her BFA in Painting at Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1991, is a member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, and is listed in the Women Artists Archive National Directory. Léni’s engagement in the arts has encompassed volunteerism in the community, including Art All Night Trenton and the Hamilton Public Schools. She takes her art to the streets for community events including Communiversity Princeton and the Doylestown Arts Festival. She married sculptor G. Frederick Morante in 1989; was an arts and architectural projects administrator at Firedance Studio in Hopewell for ten years; and is currently making art full-time.

Léni’s work has been collected by Janssen Pharmaceutica, Johnson & Johnson, Intech Corp, Bristol Myers-Squibb, J. Seward Johnson, Jr., C-Tec Corp, and for private collections internationally. Solo exhibits include Princeton University GSS Gallery (1995 and 2017), Johnson & Johnson (1998 and 2019), and Passaic County Community College (1996) Visit her official website at: http://lenimorante.com/