Fine Art Humorist, Jeff Leedy
Self-Submission
This is an artist who comes to make you laugh. Wait a minute. This is ART! I’m not supposed to laugh, am I? Yes, you are! This is the work of Jeff Leedy, nationally known fine art humorist.
Whether you crack up at “Counsel Approaching the Bench” or “Dogus Interruptus,” you’ll find yourself in a lighter, happier mood. Jeff Leedy’s art just makes people happy.
One customer quipped, ” I laughed so hard, I forgot I was an attorney.”
After graduating from Syracuse University, just after the Spanish American War, Leedy began a long career in advertising after being told, “Advertising would be the most fun you could have with your clothes on.”
Several big New York ad agencies including Y&R used his talents until he braved his way to San Francisco in 1974 where he won a Clio, the “Oscar” of advertising. After that, he white-knuckled as a freelance humorous illustrator and did so for eight years with top national clients like IBM and Qantas.
Then, he hit a wall and needed a big change. “I felt I needed to do my own creations, my own art.” But that meant doing the art and then (gulp) finding out if anyone wanted it. In other words, be a starving fine artist.
Two turning points happened simultaneously in 1989. First, Leedy entered—and won—a gold medal in the NY Society of Illustrators (a very conservative bunch) first Humor Show, beating out 3500 international entries. And second, his new oil pastel style was accepted into the Sausalito Art Festival, the #1 outdoor show in the country, (where he has now exhibited for 18 years). The horse was out of the barn and the word got around.
His originals, reproductions and commissions are a colorful delight to his customers. Former owner of two waterfront galleries, Art that Makes You Laugh, in Sausalito and Mendocino, for ten years and exhibitor at hundreds of outdoor art shows around the country, Leedy estimates he has sold over 350,000 of his prints and originals. Currently, his work is being licensed onto magnets, mugs, calendars, and more as he creates new works in his Garden City studio. Leedy also has several wholesale accounts who carry his reproductions. His humor gallery concept, Art That Makes You Laugh® is available as a franchise to those who desire to own a great humor gallery, a gallery that makes people happy.
Leedy gives utmost thanks to his wife and partner, Elaine, who keeps the boat afloat and is a fine art pastelist in her own right.
Now in Boise, his passion and humor are directed towards humorous 2-minute video blogs he calls The Funday Sunnies©.
Jeff feels it is his mission to share and spread the humor that he was given by God. And lucky for us Art That Makes You Laugh® does just that.
