Sudden Skies', presents a series of pastel paintings depicting the changing celestial light of the sky and its relationship to the landscape. Pieter says, "I paint to explore the vibrant patterns and elemental moods of nature. I'm driven to give expression to my experience of this life around me, wherever I am. I find my greatest inspiration in the sublimity of the Adirondacks, and in the beauty of the Hudson Valley and Northwest Hills that make the stage for daily life."

The Artist trained at the Art Students League of New York in the academic style of the Boston School, the American descendant of French and English traditions. Pieter says, "I'm grateful to have had grounding in traditional techniques. It is the departure point for exploration and improvisation with my expression. It's parallel to the music I play. There is form, yet part of the joy is being able to take a theme and extend it beyond its typical boundaries. I accomplish that with color. With this show I've kept most of my rendering apparent while using color to generate a sense of the marvelous in everyday."

  During the 1990's Pieter traveled the world as Tour Manager for the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, providing him with encounters with legends of jazz and blues, while seeing first-hand the cultural treasures of Japan and Europe. "Having grown up in a musical family it's natural for me to bridge the relationship between music and art. They share the same language, the language of color. When I play music I am intensely involved with sonic color, as such, when I paint I am building on lyrical qualities in my visual compositions."

Pieter is an award winning artist, muralist and art educator and   has exhibited throughout the region at galleries including Ruth and Skitch Henderson's Silo Gallery in New Milford, CT. His Adirondack themed art was chosen for the 2000 Winter Goodwill games at the Olympic Museum in Lake Placid, NY, followed by an Adirondack Art Fund grant for artistic excellence. He has received grants from the Seherr-Thoss Foundation in Litchfield, CT and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts for his work as a muralist, guiding students in mural making, for which he received the Friend of Education Award by the Connecticut Region One School Board. Today Pieter teaches drawing and painting at the Farmington Valley Art Center in Avon, CT and I.S.183, The Art School for the Berkshires, in Stockbridge, MA. His educational programs and residencies include the New Britain Museum of American Art and the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, CT, where his summer workshops take advantage of the museum's gardens and world-class collection of Impressionist masterpieces.

There will be an opening reception for the artist on Sunday, April 30, from 11:00AM to 1:00PM, to which the public is invited. Mr. Leffert's artwork can be viewed at The Moviehouse Studio Gallery, 48 Main Street, Millerton, New York, during regular theater hours now through June 15, 2006.