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Gary Leddy The Man Behind the Art


“6 a.m. Coffee” depicts a cowboy making a meal by the fire. Photo by Harriet Orleans


By Harriet Orleans A


mong the gently rolling hills and ranches of western Oklahoma is the small town of Roll. Blink while passing through and you will miss the entire town. Nestled in this small community lives Gary Leddy. In western Oklahoma, Leddy is best known as a farmer and a rancher. He lives with his wife, Mariene, on a ranch in Dewey County and has two grown sons, Jason and Ryan, and a daughter, Marmisa. In other places, he is recognized for his art. Paints and metals are his preferred mediums.


I meet Leddy in his gallery in Roll. As I step inside I am awed by the paintings and sculptures I find inside. My favorite is “The Get Away,” a sculpture of three ante- lopes galloping through the savannah. The antelopes are sculpted one atop the other, but with Leddy’s ability to create move- ment, it is easy to picture the fear and anxi- ety the antelopes must feel as they are


stalked by a lion. Another favorite is “The Colt,” a life-size sculpture of a colt. Leddy’s ability to capture realism and his attention to detail are obvious in both his small and full-size pieces. His artistry is also strong in his paintings where he captures the West and the land, barns, horses and cattle around Oklahoma as he sees it. Leddy’s story began in 1946 when he was born in northern Roger Mills County. “Not much has changed except for the weather and the oil drilling,” he says. Leddy, a member of Kiwash Electric


Cooperative, comes from a long line of farmers and is the first of his family to pur- sue art to such a degree. While his parents were not artists, they encouraged his work from the very beginning, especially his mother, Delta Young Leddy. Leddy went on to pursue his bachelor’s degree in art from Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Okla. While still at the university, he met his wife at the school library and won his first blue rib- bon for his art at Shepherd Mall in


20 WWW.OK-LIVING.COOP


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