Alicia Leeke, a native South Carolinian, is a painter and artist working in Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina. She first became known for her post-impressionistic style and incorporation of Fauvism. Her artwork is distinctive for its dry brush painting technique, gentle distortion of linear perspective, and use of thick line and brush strokes. She became widely known for her curated exhibition, View From Under the Microscope, which uses phytoplankton to garner awareness about climate change and ocean acidification. Early life Leeke was born in Columbia, South Carolina. She began her education at Columbia College, an all-girls, private liberal arts school, to study biology in hopes of becoming a veterinarian. During her second year she vacationed in Paris and visited the Louvre, where she fell in love with the French Impressionists and solidified her passion for painting. She also visited her most inspiring spot in France, Montmartre. She later transferred to the University of South Carolina where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. Upon graduation, she worked in computer graphics and went on to work for six years at the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control as the Art Director. Leeke then worked at General Binding Corporation (GBC) in outside sales. Just a year after her employment at GBC, she began taking art classes again at the Columbia Museum of Art and used her spare time off work to attend art shows and sell work in Atlanta and Chicago. She also studied under Virginia Anderson and Ginger Munnerlin. Inspired by the French Impressionist masters, she further developed her own loose, abstract style. She was named by Charlotte's Red Sky Gallery as an Emerging Artist in 2006. In the summer of 2008, she experimented with her palette by using a technique known as Color Field painting and began painting city and landscapes in bright, vibrant colors. She developed a brushstroke style, using acrylics in a way to give the appearance of oils and included "intense black lines." Her company underwent a merger in 2008 and she took the opportunity to embark on her dream of becoming a full-time, self-supporting artist. Art career Leeke compares a series of art in a body of work to that of multiple product lines in sales. She has paintings produced in a series over time including: abstracts, landscapes, cityscapes, and the most recent conceptual works in digital media. Her travels to paint