After graduating in French and anthropology, Gwyneth Leech used her Thouron fellowship to take an “exciting and terrifying” step in a different direction — studying at Edinburgh College of Art. There she launched a creative career that has spanned three decades and two continents. In Scotland, she was artist in residence at the Scottish Opera, painted murals for the interior of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, made videos on the lives of African and Asian immigrants and served as president of the Society of Scottish Artists. Now living in New York, she’s drawing, painting and doing installations — notably of her iconic painted paper coffee cups. After one installation opened in London and then Glasgow, she noted, “I have to say that my Thouron fellowship truly enabled the kind of transformative, personal yet public, Anglo-American exchange the founding family intended!” Photo by Marianne Barcellona.
