Leni S. Berliner is an artist and former renewable energy entrepreneur who accrued nearly four decades of expertise in international economic development prior to delving full-time into her artistic endeavors. She studied art in high school and, after finishing her career in renewable energy, she returned to painting and studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran College of Art & Design from 2002 to 2004. Since that time, Ms. Berliner emphasizes that painting reoriented her life, bringing to her a sense of peace and tranquility amid a world that requires the reintroduction of beauty. Since 2014, her artwork has been shown in numerous venues across Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia and New York City. Her artwork has also been purchased and is showcased in private homes across the nation.
Ms. Berliner notes that her goal in painting landscapes is to share with her viewers a sense of energy in specific spaces. While choosing and photographing a scene, she applies exercises from figure drawing to identify feelings, whether these feelings are inherent in sceneries of water, rocks, or trees. Painting in her studio, Dancing Tree Arts, she notes her style is American modernism, in which her landscapes are made primarily in acrylic paint and occasionally in conjunction with other media. Ms. Berliner says that since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, she has often used her imagination to conjure paintings, such as her painting “Meditators Make the Weather – Thought Bubbles” in October 2020.
As a “recovering international business woman,” prior to becoming an artist, Ms. Berliner had careers in international economic development, mining and renewable energy. She was Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Farms International from 2007 through 2018. She is a recognized innovator and leader in low emissions development, a way to continue economic growth while reducing the effects of climate change.
To remain abreast of developments in the artistic realm, Ms. Berliner maintained affiliation with the National Museum of Women in the Arts from 2018 to 2019. When reflecting on her art and other artists’ work, she says, “Painters make hundreds of decisions when they are planning and making a painting, and when you can’t decide about something, it shows. When you move the horizon line up or down, the perspective changes.” She is bilingual in English and Spanish, and speaks fluent French and retains some Portuguese with basic Hebrew and Arabic language skills. Looking forward, she intends to continue painting and displaying her work at galleries across the United States.
