TVHS graduate is an artist for Harry Potter

By: JOANNA CORMAN - Staff Writer | Wednesday, May 12, 2004 11:11 PM PDT ∞

For Jennifer Leong, a longtime animal lover, the pit bull she adopted in art school was not an unusual birthday present. But it's one that changed her. Since Leong, a former Temecula resident, adopted Grimis, she started creating allegorical portraits of animals.

The 29-year-old began by painting Grimis, her 97-pound red brindle pit bull she calls goofy and communicative. Her animal portraits, sophisticated, empathetic, complex and technically beautiful, caught the attention of the art world.

They also helped her land a prestigious assignment as an artist for the Harry Potter franchise. This summer, Leong's illustrations will come out on the popular boy-wizard products, to coincide with the movie release of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," due out next month.

Leong, a 1992 Temecula Valley High School graduate who now lives in Pasadena, said she couldn't reveal too much about her work for Warner Bros. From April 2003 through the first of this year, Leong was consumed with the assignment, using oil paints and the computer to illustrate the film's animal and human characters.

It is the type of assignment a more seasoned artist would more likely snag, say those in the art world. Leong, however, got the assignment a few months out of art school.

"Usually you have to do more behind-the-scenes things, prove yourself, work your way into that," said Kit Baron, vice president of admissions at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, from which Leong graduated in 2002.

It would be wrong to characterize the work as a break because that implies luck, Baron said. Leong is hard-working and determined, say those who know her.

A turning point

Leong has always showed aptitude in her art, her parents, Madonna and Terrance Leong said. When Leong was 5, her parents enrolled her in an art class with her older sister.

"Jennifer's for some reason, you look at it, and it's a little bit more appealing," Madonna Leong said of her younger daughter's pictures. "It's the exact same painting, but they don't look exactly the same."

Leong is one of four siblings, all of whom graduated from Temecula Valley High School. Her father is a chiropractor in town and her mother works at the business.

Although she didn't take many art classes growing up, Leong was always drawing or painting, and most often her subjects were animals. "Growing up, the stray dogs followed her home," Madonna Leong said. "For some reason she's a magnet for animals. They love her."

When Leong was about 9, she wanted a horse. "We ignored it," Madonna Leong said. After school, she would walk to a nearby ranch and muck stalls in exchange for riding lessons.

One year, Leong's parents asked her what she wanted for her birthday. She knew there was a horse store in Fallbrook, Madonna Leong said, and asked for an English riding hat and boots.

"She knew they were having a sale," Madonna Leong said.

By the time she was 11, Leong had saved enough money and bought a horse.

In high school, Leong said she knew she wanted to go to Art Center, one of the best schools for the study of art in the country. But a career as an artist didn't seem practical. The tuition was expensive, more than $10,000 a semester, and she wondered what sort of career opportunities were available.

Instead of art school, Leong attended Cal Poly Pomona and studied advertising. "That wasn't really satisfying," she said. For so many years she had been thinking about art. Because of that, "Everything else felt like it was second choice."

On Fridays, she would drive back to Temecula to spend the weekend working at Thornton Winery to help pay for school. One day she was having lunch with two friends, asking them for career advice, thinking art school was too expensive. Through tears, she asked, "What am I going to do with my life?"

"If you don't do it," her friends told her, "it's a waste."

An unexpected portrait

Leong entered Art Center in 1999 to study illustration. She gave up her life to study art, she said. It was an enormous commitment, both financially and emotionally.

"At Art Center, you never sleep," Leong wrote in an e-mail. "I felt myself physically aging and you pretty much sacrifice everything else in your life and let and art concept take over."

She was busy with school and living in a studio apartment. When her boyfriend asked what she wanted for her birthday, she asked for a dog. They went to the pound. At the back, in the "dreaded" pit bull section, she found Grimis, 5 months old with scabby stumps for ears. He was going to be euthanized. Her first reaction, she said, was one of disgust. Instead of showing aggression, however, Grimis showed sweetness.

"There was some kind of connection," she said.

She calls her dog a "big baby," prone to making faces, who loves people and other animals.

It was the first time she had been inside an animal shelter. She felt desperate to get him out and contacted a pit bull rescue group. Since rescuing Grimis, Leong has fostered about a half-dozen other dogs, rehabilitating and training them before adopting them out.

Her love of animals and concern for their welfare fuels her artwork. In art school, Leong found herself painting Grimis, but she wondered if it would limit her artistically.

"I found myself steering away from it (animal portraiture)," she said. "I felt like I should explore."

But her paintings earned her wall space in the school's art gallery and scholarships.

"When I paint animals, that's what everyone gravitates to more," she said.

In addition to animals, Leong creates multidimensional pieces out of wood, decoupage and other materials, does graphic design and paints people. It's the animal paintings that seem to get the most attention.

History, personality

Baron, the Art Center admissions officer, couldn't stop looking at a portrait hanging in the school's gallery that Leong did of a pit bull surrounded by broken mannequin legs. She bought it and later commissioned a painting of her cat.

In her 25 years in the art college world, Baron said Leong is one of the most technically gifted artists she has ever met. Leong is a beautiful painter, Baron said, but her paintings go beyond mastering technique. Leong captures both the history and personality of the animal and the relationship with its owner, with color, light and symbolism.

"I have never seen anybody do work like this," Baron said. "It's just so unique. Very often animals can be kind of corny. In the art world, they're not regarded as an important kind of art but she lifts that to a whole other level. It isn't just a likeness of another animal. She is putting so much into it."

In the pit bull painting Baron bought, Leong painted the dog with a sad, but attentive, look standing in a landscape of broken female mannequin legs. On one hand, Leong said, the viewer might think the picture is emblematic of the dog's aggression. Leong included the legs to illustrate the dog's history. It was an abandoned dog. The legs show that the canine was disposable, tossed out with the trash. The moody sky reflects the dog's aggressive personality and the curvaceous legs, the dog's feminine side ---- she is petite, clean and prances when she walks, Leong said.

The symbolism makes for a more interesting painting for her. And "it makes the painting more interesting and meaningful for the owner," Leong said.

When she paints a portrait, Leong spends time getting to know the animal and its owner. Pet owners tend to talk about their animals as "cute" and "happy," but Leong gets them to talk about their histories. She spends time with the animals, observing, playing, taking natural photos and looking through family albums.

"I have a lot of empathy for people and living things and am interested in knowing them on a personal and truthful level ---- what makes them tick," Leong wrote in an e-mail. "I'm interested in their stories and experiences, and unspoken relationships that are only seen through patient and perceptive observation."

In her one-bedroom house, the living room doubles as her studio and there is a painting in progress of a dog mounted on the wall next to an open window. She shares the house with her boyfriend, her dog, a parrot, several finches and three lovebirds.

She wears a silver Tiffany's dog collar around her neck and a baseball T-shirt with the slogan, "My best friend is a pit bull." Grimis repeatedly saunters into the room and climbs on the futon while her finches chirp in the background.

Leong is thinking about returning to Temecula to teach art to children. There were few opportunities here when she was growing up. She would like to teach classes that let children gravitate toward the type of art at which they would excel, rather than complete a set lesson. She is also putting together a Web site, www. jenniferleong.com, and plans to allow clients to donate a portion of their purchases to animal rights groups.

"A lot of artists can be somewhat introverted and self-involved," Baron said. "She cares so much about making people happy with her work."

Contact staff writer Joanna Corman at (909) 676-4315, Ext. 2625, or jcorman@californian.com.