In Salt d’Azur, artist Denis Leon transforms coastal imagery into luminous mixed-media works at Leon+Good Gallery

That’s exactly the reaction artist and gallery co-founder Denis Leon hopes for with Salt d’Azur, his newest exhibition of mixed-media coastal works at Leon+Good Gallery, which he co-founded with director and Locust Valley resident Natalia Good.

“I hope people feel like they’re in the place,” he says. “Right in the image, right where it was taken.”

It’s a simple intention with surprisingly powerful results. In a cultural moment defined by noise, rush, and screens, Leon leans—with conviction—toward joy.

“I’m not trying to say anything too serious,” he says. “I’m just trying to make you happy.”

A luxury of lightness

The works in Salt d’Azur come from Leon’s travels over the past several years. Jaunts that have taken him to the Amalfi Coast, the French Riviera, and St. Barths. But he resists framing the show as a travelogue. For him, the geography is less important than the feeling his coastal images carry.

“It’s the next series,” he says. “People have been looking at the same thing for a while, and like any artist, you scale yourself and keep moving forward.”

That forward motion unfolds in subject matter, as well as in the transformation he applies to each piece. These aren’t photographs in the traditional sense. Leon prints his images on canvas or heavy stock, then layers them with resin, pigment, and hand-applied crushed glass. The result is textural and dimensional, art that changes as a viewer moves or as daylight shifts.

“How do you bring an ocean to life after the photograph is taken?” he says. “My version is to paint resin over the water and cover it with super-fine crushed glass. When the light hits, it starts moving as if the ocean glistens. That’s my big thing.”

The effect is immediate, especially for Gold Coast viewers whose own lives stretch between North Shore homes, Hamptons summers, and Florida winters. These are the coastlines many readers know intimately and Leon’s art gives them back those places in distilled, luminous form.

Playful, decorative, and deeply personal

Leon calls the collection “playful” and “decorative,” but the lightness comes from a deeply rooted place. Raised in Russia, he didn’t grow up with beaches at all, not even as an idea. When he immigrated to the U.S. at nine years old, the Atlantic Ocean became a symbol of freedom, possibility, and wonder.

“We didn’t have simple necessities where I grew up,” he says. “So when you show a nine-year-old the Atlantic Ocean for the first time… it stays with you. Nature becomes the antidote to everything else.”

That antidote extends to Salt d’Azur, where bright colors and coastal spontaneity push back against modern overstimulation. 

“There’s so much noise now,” Leon says. “People don’t enjoy things the way they used to. So if I can capture a feeling and put it in your home, maybe it brings you back.”

His process mirrors that philosophy. It’s part instinct and part planning, but always evolving. 

“A lot of pieces start out one way in my head and end up totally different,” he says. “It’s experimental. It’s improv. Some I’ll never make again.”

Beyond the exhibition

As Leon+Good continues to grow, the gallery is expanding its role in the local art ecosystem. Next up is a collaboration with the Nassau County Museum of Art, where artist John Grande is completing the museum’s first artist-in-residence program.

“We’d like to take him on after his residency,” Leon says. “It’s the beginning of something bigger. Supporting local artists, giving them opportunities after the museum, bringing their work into the retail market. That’s important to us.”

With Salt d’Azur, Leon’s imagery offers an escape, a memory, a moment of brightness in a world that rarely pauses. And in a gallery on the Gold Coast, those moments feel right at home.