Underground Black Arts Festival Featuring Ryan Nichole Leary (Ryan Nichole Studios)

Ryan Nichole Leary was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and her love for visual art started as early as one. Like most children, Leary was caught decorating the walls with markers and crayons. However, Allen and Darla Leary took this as an opportunity to encourage her creativity and used butcher paper to line the walls in the house so she can continue her murals. Leary attended both Bowling Green State University (Art History) and University of Cincinnati (Art Education). She has taught at schools, colleges and universities, museums, cultural institutions and more.Today, she continues to work as a visual artist, specializing in portraits, provides art history lectures at local institutions and blends her love for creativity and activism in her work.  She describes her work as “Obnoxiously Large, Unapologetically Black." It is through her artwork, lectures, and teachings she hopes to correct false narratives and celebrate the brilliance of the diaspora.

Website: Ryannicholestudios.com
IG: Ryannicholestudios

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Solar and Luna from the Crystalized Blackness series

From the series of Crystallized Blackness, these works are inspired by the formation of stars. Dust, particles, atoms , cold gas swirl and begin to fold into themselves under the pressure and weight of gravity.  Upon the collapse of their own gravity, brilliance radiates from within; illuminating areas of space once bleak, dark or dormant. This is the essence of  being a black woman. ​

Luna (Woman)                                                       
40 x 40
Mixed Media on Canvas
2023
$1000.00

Solar (Man)
40 x 40 
Mixed Media on Canvas
2023
​$1000.00​

Selected works from Ascension of Alchemy

The Ascension of Alchemy is a look at how AI can impact our future; not Artificial Intelligence, but Ancestral Intelligence. These layered pieces start with the essence of Melanin under a microscope (blues, purples, black) layered with gilded brilliance of Blackness.  Layered with architectural spaces that were created as portals of wisdom, worship and rest along with cosmology of our ancestors begs asks quintessential questions. Is the utopia for melanated people spiritual, physical, imaginative, real? Or Do they coexist at intersections of planes that we have dared to dream or build?

Portal
36 x 48
Oil on Canvas
2024
$2000.00

Through the Eyes of Future Ancestors
36 x 48 
Oil on Canvas
2024
$3000.00


Kosmos called Home
36 x 48
Oil on Canvas
2024
$2000.00