Postcards From Paris

© Leigh Viner 2017

Infinity of archives, here are my latest. Enjoy xo

Unclouded

A recent landscape of Copenhagen that was inspired from Allure Magazine /March 2017 available as prints here.

Postcards From Paris

Getting back outside with exercise and just soaking in the sun throughout the day w/ SPF of course has a new happiness that does not exist in the Winter, feeling it now! Also realizing it's time to stock up on some new warm weather staples. This summer I am going to keep it simple besides a few have to have pieces, as travel is on my mind, especially editing and going through the archives. It has been forever it seems, but other obligations were front and center. I think it's so important, even if stepping out for a short weekend getaway, even a stay-cation will do to stay refreshed and inspired. I work from home, so it's very important for me to step away when I can or seasons will start to overlap and I will wear myself out. So on that note, time to dream up a few ideas for the upcoming months, (in the afternoon sun ) ;)

xo

Postcards From Paris

Enjoying a slow Sunday finally editing some photos from my Paris archives. A few will make it into the shop while others will be for a personal book I am making of all the cities I feel so blessed to have been to ( and cannot wait to get back )!!!
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I am now off to paint for a few hours.

xo

Mental Getaway - Shanghai

© Leigh Viner 2015

The current mental getaway is of Shanghai China. Have you ever been? It is definitely on my list of places to visit one day. I was catching up on an older Travel and Leisure magazine from last fall which inspired me to grab my sketchbook and immerse further into the city. I hope you enjoy.






Photos via A Pair & A Spare Also make sure to check out Geneva's quick guide to Shanghai and to see more photos from her trip here.






Via Nicole Warne

Style Inspiration:


Maijias blog and Instagram

Music:



AM444 – Detache Toi”


You can find more from Smartshanghai.com


Duranvirginia

From One Thing To Another

© Leigh Viner 2015

Coming soon, a new style of prints from my travels starting with NYC that was actually sparked by an article I read today in the current New York Mag, ( posted below ).
I love how inspiration can come from anything and everything unexpected.

After Midnight - I Miss Last Night Already by Jay McInerney

"I am a lifelong insomniac, so it was inevitable that I would make New York my home. Even if I don’t venture out late on a given night, it is a great comfort, at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m., to know that I can, that there are others out there on the streets, working and playing, restless and questing for love, drugs, food, sex, or cash, that the streets are bathed in yellow light. Elsewhere, midnight is the end of the night, but in New York, it’s the middle, if not the beginning. For some of us, the possibility junkies, the city is far more welcoming after dark, vivid and electric, inexhaustible in its store of potential pleasures. The night is egalitarian in a way that the day is not. By day, New York is segregated into professional ghettos, but at night the boundaries are loosened. The city becomes more cosmopolitan as the tribes mix; the lawyers doff their ties, and the nocturnal dandies don their makeup. After a day of drudgery, the office intern lies down for a nap and emerges, hours later, having metamorphosed into Cinderella.

Not every night is eventful, of course, even the ones you were most hopeful about. Still, especially when you’re thinking about nightlife in the past tense, it’s hard not to romanticize what happened, even, or maybe especially, if you weren’t there. I’m sorry that I missed New York in the ’20s, during Prohibition. (The lure of the forbidden is always more compelling than an engraved invitation. Who wouldn’t rather be an outlaw, really?) But the greatest era of nighttime in New York is always the one that coincides with your own youth. The darkness never seems so rich in promise as it does when you’re in your 20s.

When I arrived in the city in November 1979 — one of its most mythologized eras, I know, but it was mine — the death of the disco age had just been sealed when Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager were busted for tax evasion. And what replaced Studio 54 and Xenon was grittier, more egalitarian, and, to our minds, way cooler and more authentic. It was a kind of punk reaction to glitzy disco, although elements of disco, including a pervasive pansexuality, were subsumed into this new order. Punk had been invented on the Lower East Side a few years before I arrived, and in late ’79 it was still possible to hear the Ramones in CBGB, or Talking Heads at the Mudd Club, or Iggy Pop at the Peppermint Lounge. They were places where a wide-eyed aspiring writer/New Yorker fact-checker dressed like a preppie could rub shoulders with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Lou Reed and David Byrne, Jim Carroll and William Burroughs, as well as the drag queens, club kids, and drug dealers who were the glue of the scene.

It’s easy to glamorize the decay now, but the city was teetering on the edge of the financial brink; bankruptcy had been narrowly averted, but jobs and affluent white people were still fleeing for the suburbs. A heroin epidemic was ravaging the poorer neighborhoods of the city, creating a wave of crime that spilled over everywhere. The whiff of danger had become the scent of the Manhattan streets. You quickly developed a sixth sense, and you tried to keep it turned on even as you got obliterated on alcohol and drugs.

I suppose this era was probably almost finished by the time I had a book party for my first novel at Area, the sprawling Tribeca club with art installations that changed every six weeks and legendary coed bathrooms that were the scenes of epic orgies. The fête was arranged by a party promoter — a phrase that was brand-new to me then. In 1985, not long after my party, Rubell and Schrager, having served their prison sentences, took their show downtown, opening a huge club in the Palladium, a former concert hall on East 14th Street. I remember showing up after midnight for the opening, joining at least 2,000 people on the sidewalk desperate for entry. Where the hell had they all come from? It felt like the end of something — if only my 20s.

I can’t help feeling the night has been tamed, packaged, and commodified in recent years, that the downtown I was part of has become a kind of brand. Perhaps that was always inevitable in a place that’s the world capital of money. Or maybe the real scene has moved elsewhere, to Bushwick or Ridgewood or somewhere that trend-piece writers haven’t yet discovered. I suspect that young people still venture out after dark in New York City with something more propulsive than cash — and with the same sense of wonder and hope that we did."

Carry On

Spring is here, thank you!! A little windy today, but warm regardless. I thought the freezing cold weather would never go away, but shortly after we moved and settled the weather changed as well and now my focus on the near future is those wonderful summer trips that I cannot wait to plan.

First up, a long and overdue girls trip and with planning I have been thinking maybe it's time to replace my go to carry on. This bag seriously has been with me for almost a decade and countless trips around the world. I tried only once to replace it and failed, the bag, expensive and which will remain nameless fell apart after only one trip overseas. So back to my cheaper but so loved Guess flower travel bag that has many benefits for me, like it really does hold a million things, an extra front pocket for go to extras, plus another large zippered inside pocket for many more necessities. I think the only thing missing that I need is a sustainable shoulder strap. Anyway, another benefit, I can keep it under the seat in front of me on the plane which doubles as a squishy foot rest. Best part, I have instant access to a million things that I bring on board to keep me entertained instead of trying to reach into those overhead bins and it just has so much personality.

Bottom line, I really should just learn to pack less, ask anyone that has traveled with me and this bag, they would agree 100% with that statement as they all at one point or another had to help me carry it more often then I should have allowed. Merci et je suis désolé ;)


So, as I have rambled into my own decision that she is not going anywhere, I would still like to try to find a good one with a shoulder strap in a similar style, but if you have any recommendations and favorites definitely let me know.


{ 1/ Moncler, 2/ Kate Spade, 3/ Sole Society, 4/ Kate Spade }

Postcards From Washington

Known for its bleak weather, thriving music scene, and coffee shops, Washington is anything but dreary.

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Washington, to visit one of my best friends from high school. I had never traveled to the Pacific Northwest before, but I was absolutely thrilled to go. From the band, Death Cab for Cutie, to Starbucks and Nordstrom, Washington has been home to a number of my favorite things. I was ecstatic to see the state that had contributed to so many of the things I love, not to mention getting to see my friend, whom I hadn’t seen in over a year. I was not disappointed, and became completely enamored with the state's natural beauty, art, weather, bustling cities, and the people I met there. 

Exploring Capital Hill

Railing behind Pike Place Market. The ocean's proximity to the market was surprising to me. I grew up in Denver, so I’m used to being landlocked in cities. Even after living in New York for a summer, I still can’t get used to the idea of having water so close to a metropolis.

Adventuring in Fremont

Graffitti under Pike Place

The Seattle Great Wheel, behind Pike Place. We didn't have time to go on it, but it looked like a lot of fun.

Based on Seattle's unofficial status as the coffee capital of the US, we couldn't resist hitting up as many coffee shops as we could.

Soaking up the natural beauty as we hiked at Whatcom Falls.

Chuckanut Drive had the cutest signs. Hundreds of trees were adorned with carvings that professed couple's undying love for one another.

Hopped out of the car, on Chuckanut Drive, to watch the sunset over Samish Bay.