Denis Leclerc | Denis Leclerc Art

Ephyra

Posted on 5 January 2026 | by Denis

Ephyra as Abstract Digital Art

Ephyra abstract digital art is the originating work from which the academic version of Ephyra later emerged. This abstract composition is not conceived as a preliminary study, but as a complete and autonomous artwork that establishes the structural, chromatic, and spatial conditions for figuration within my Siren digital art series.

I always publish the abstract version first, because it defines the visual framework that the academic siren will later condense and refine.

Origin of Ephyra Abstract Digital Art

This piece was developed through a layered digital painting process, focusing on the accumulation of colour, density, and controlled movement. Rather than depicting a subject, the composition organizes forces within the frame, allowing presence to be sensed without being named or illustrated.

The image resists a single focal point. Instead, it relies on internal tension and balance, creating a field where form remains suspended and unresolved.

Composition and Visual Structure

The composition is built around subtle asymmetries and a restrained palette. Colour transitions are intentionally gradual, avoiding sharp contrasts in favour of tonal depth and cohesion. Areas of compression and release guide the eye without imposing a narrative direction.

This structural approach allows the work to function both as a standalone abstract piece and as the source structure for later figurative incarnations.

Digital Process and Print Considerations

Ephyra is produced as a high-resolution digital painting, designed from the outset for fine art printing. I pay close attention to surface continuity, colour interaction, and tonal stability to ensure consistency across different print sizes.

The work maintains clarity at close range while preserving overall coherence when viewed from a distance, making it suitable for large-format presentation.

Relationship to the Academic Version

The academic version of Ephyra is not a reinterpretation of this abstract work, but a condensation of it. The abstract composition establishes the visual logic—balance, restraint, and internal rhythm—that later allows the figure to emerge.

If you would like to view my available works and editions, you can also find my catalogue on Singulart.

Ephyra academic study depicting a restrained androgynous winged figure developed from the abstract digital artwork Ephyra, rendered with controlled academic light — Ephyra — Study in Academic Light

Recreating an Academic Image

With Ephyra — Study in Academic Light, I approached the academic figure as a disciplined condensation of an existing abstract composition. The goal was not to translate the abstract image literally, but to test how its internal structure could sustain a restrained figurative presence.

The academic version of Ephyra draws on classical principles of balance, verticality, and controlled illumination. Light is used to describe form without dramatization, and the composition remains stable and frontal. Expression is deliberately minimal, allowing the figure to assert presence without narrative or symbolism.

Anatomical decisions were made with restraint. Proportions are slightly elongated to reinforce neutrality and suspension rather than character or identity. The figure remains calm, almost indifferent, positioned between abstraction and representation.

Recreating an academic image requires a precise visual discipline. Light must shape the form without spectacle. Texture must suggest material presence without emphasizing technique. Every element is measured to maintain coherence and credibility.

This study is not conceived as a portrait, nor as a historical reconstruction. It functions as a technical and visual test: how far an abstract composition can be condensed into a figure without losing its structural integrity. The palette, atmosphere, and compositional logic all originate from the abstract version of Ephyra.

In this sense, Ephyra — Study in Academic Light does not stand apart from the abstract work. It exists as a secondary state — a moment where abstraction is slowed down, disciplined, and temporarily held within the figure.

Makena abstract siren digital artwork by Denis Leclerc, exploring abstraction, balance, and visual restraint

Makera

Posted on 5 January 2026 | by Denis

Makena Abstract Siren Study

Makena Abstract Siren is a body of work that explores the siren figure through progressive degrees of abstraction. In this piece, I deliberately step away from representation to focus on pictorial decisions that shape how presence is perceived rather than described.

This work belongs to the abstract continuity of the series, where the siren is no longer defined by anatomy or narrative, but by visual balance, density, and restraint. You can explore the full series here:
https://leclerc-art.com/siren-digital-art-series/

Working Through Abstraction

The objective behind Makena was precise: to suggest abundance without excess. Rather than relying on symbolic elements, I worked through straightforward pictorial techniques — layering, softened edges, controlled diffusion, and reduced contrast. These decisions allow the image to remain visually rich while avoiding illustrative detail.

Each layer was introduced gradually, then partially blurred or reduced, until the composition reached a state where forms are sensed rather than clearly identified. Abstraction is used here as a working method, not as decoration — a way to control how much of the figure is allowed to appear.

Origin and Meaning of the Name Makena

The name Makena has East African origins and is often associated with the idea of abundance or fullness. This meaning directly informed the approach to the work — not abundance as accumulation, but as contained density. The image was developed to convey a sense of visual richness held in balance, where fullness is felt through restraint rather than excess.

Technique and Visual Outcome

Makena was developed as a digital painting, using a process similar to traditional pictorial construction. The image was built through successive passes, with constant adjustments to texture, luminosity, and tonal balance. Contrast was intentionally limited, and sharpness applied selectively, in order to maintain cohesion across the surface.

The result is an abstract siren that holds together through balance rather than detail. The image does not aim for immediate readability, but for sustained presence — a visual field where weight, warmth, and atmosphere remain stable over time. In this Makena abstract siren, abstraction is used as a practical tool to control density, balance, and visual weight.

Position Within the Siren Series

Within the Siren Series, Makena marks a shift toward a more concentrated form of abstraction. The siren is no longer an image to be recognized, but a visual condition to be experienced. This approach allows the series to expand while maintaining coherence between figurative and abstract works.

Makena is also presented on Singulart, alongside other works from the series:
https://www.singulart.com

Makena academic study depicting a restrained winged female figure inspired by 19th-century academic light, derived from an abstract digital artwork — Makena — Study in Academic Light

Recreating an Academic Image

With Makena — Study in Academic Light, I set out to recreate the visual discipline of an academic study, not as an exercise in nostalgia, but as a way to test my abstract practice against a historically codified form of beauty.

The figure draws inspiration from the pictorial language developed by 19th-century Orientalist painters, particularly in their approach to light, texture, and the idealized presentation of the female body. In that tradition, beauty was carefully constructed through controlled illumination, stable composition, and a refined treatment of surfaces rather than spontaneous expression.

Here, the focus was on capturing the quiet strength and elegance of an Ethiopian woman while working within the constraints of academic painting. The posture is stable, the expression restrained, and the light deliberately measured. Nothing is exaggerated. Everything is held.

Recreating an academic image requires a specific kind of attention. Light must describe form without dramatizing it. Texture must suggest material presence without calling attention to technique. Balance, calm, and visual coherence are essential to the image’s credibility.

This study was not conceived as a portrait, nor as a historical reconstruction. It functions as a visual and technical test: how far abstraction can be condensed into a figure without losing coherence. The colour palette, atmosphere, and compositional structure all originate from an existing abstract work. The figure emerges afterward, as a disciplined response to that abstract foundation.

In this sense, Makena — Study in Academic Light does not contradict my abstract practice. It marks a moment where abstraction is slowed down, measured against the figure, and refined — before returning to abstraction, informed by the encounter.

Nerithe

Posted on 27 December 2025 | by Denis

Nerithe — Abstract Siren and the Act of Seeing

Nerithe is one of the mythic sirens I have created as part of my Siren digital art series,
an ongoing exploration of abstraction, perception, and imagined mythologies. While her name originates from ancient sources, the work itself deliberately avoids any fixed or illustrative representation. This abstraction allows me to approach Nerithe not as a figure to be depicted, but as a presence to be constructed through colour, layering, and visual tension.

In this piece, abstraction becomes a method for imagining what does not exist. Rather than describing a form, I work through successive layers — glaze over glaze — allowing densities and subtle shifts to accumulate. Each layer alters the one beneath it, creating a surface where forms seem to emerge, dissolve, and reconfigure. Nothing is stated directly; instead, the image develops through suggestion and restraint.

This process relies heavily on how the eye behaves when confronted with ambiguity. As viewers, we instinctively search for recognizable shapes, faces, or bodies, even when none are clearly present. The eye attempts to complete what is missing. I consciously engage this phenomenon, allowing the work to hover between recognition and uncertainty. In doing so, the image gently misleads the gaze — not to deceive, but to reveal how perception itself operates.

The abstract language of Nerithe is therefore not decorative or symbolic. It is procedural. The composition emerges through repetition, erosion, and accumulation. Colour relationships and spatial tensions carry the weight of the image, while line gradually loses its descriptive role and becomes a carrier of energy and movement.

Presented as a giclée print, Nerithe preserves the depth, tonal transitions, and material sensitivity of the original digital painting. The print format allows the layered surface to remain legible, inviting slow looking and sustained attention. Rather than offering a resolved image, the work maintains a state of suspension, where meaning remains active but unsettled. The work is also presented internationally through Singulart,
where it is available as a giclée print.

Nerithe functions less as a depiction than as an experience. It occupies a space where abstraction invites the viewer to question not only what is seen, but how seeing itself is shaped. In that sense, the work aligns with one of the enduring functions of art: to guide perception just enough to make us aware of its limits.

Nerithe academic study showing a restrained winged figure on a rocky cliff, derived from an abstract digital artwork, with controlled light and a 19th-century academic reference — Nerithe — Study in Academic Light

Returning to the Figure to Test Abstraction

Since the beginning of the Siren series, abstraction has been my primary territory. It is where forms dissolve, where matter slips, where the image stops representing and becomes movement, tension, emergence. Yet at certain moments in the process, I feel the need to return to the figure.

The Academic Studies emerge from this deliberate shift. They do not signal a nostalgic return to figuration, nor a rejection of abstraction. Instead, they situate themselves within a precise historical logic, referencing 19th-century academic studies — a time when the Grand Tour led artists through Italy to test their vision against the body, light, and material presence.

In that context, the study was never an end in itself. It served to discipline the eye, to sharpen perception, to confront the ideal with the real. It is in this spirit that these images appear in my work today. They are moments of tension — temporary pauses where abstraction agrees to be challenged by the figure.

Each academic study is directly derived from an existing abstract work. The colour palette, the composition, and the atmosphere always precede the figure. The body is never the starting point; it emerges slowly, as a condensation of forms already present. The figure does not illustrate abstraction — it is a provisional consequence of it.

These images do not seek to seduce, nor to reconstruct an idealized past. They function as passages. Returning to the body allows me to measure the distance travelled, to sharpen the gaze, before plunging back into abstraction, altered by the crossing.

Rather than contradicting my abstract practice, these studies reveal its necessity. They remind me that abstraction is not a refusal of discipline, but often what follows after it.

ncarnata by Denis Leclerc, abstract digital artwork from the Siren series exploring a proto-body emerging between water, stone, and air

Incarnata

Posted on 13 December 2025 | by Denis

Incarnata marks a threshold within my ongoing exploration of sirens. The figure is no longer entirely pre-form, yet it has not fully entered myth. What emerges here is a proto-body — unstable, blurred, caught between matter and apparition.

Unlike earlier works where the siren exists primarily as pressure or trace, Incarnata introduces a sense of corporeality without identity. The form is neither male nor female, neither human nor creature. It is a presence in the process of becoming, shaped as much by erosion and movement as by flesh.

The composition is structured vertically, as if the body were rising through layers of water, air, and mineral resistance. Edges dissolve, contours refuse to settle. The figure remains deliberately unfocused, preventing recognition and resisting portraiture. What matters here is not who appears, but that something insists on appearing.

Color and texture function as agents of transformation. Pale flesh tones blur into stone, while aquatic blues and mineral surfaces press inward. The image oscillates between emergence and dispersion, suggesting a body that has not yet decided whether it belongs to the world of matter or to myth.

Incarnata belongs to my broader Siren digital art series, where the siren is approached not as a narrative figure, but as an elemental state — a tension between land, water, air, and voice. Here, incarnation is incomplete, fragile, and provisional.

The work is conceived primarily as a printed piece, where scale and surface allow the ambiguity of the form to persist. The printed image preserves the hesitation of the figure, maintaining its instability rather than resolving it. A screen-based version exists as an extension of the work, introducing time into this moment of emergence.

Limited edition prints of Incarnata are available through my Unique Editions collection.

You can also view my work on Singulart
.

Red Tide

Posted on 12 December 2025 | by Denis

Red Tide

Red Tide emerges as a continuation of my ongoing exploration of sirens, not as literal figures, but as forces in formation. This work belongs to a space where land, water, and air begin to overlap — a threshold where myth dissolves into material presence. It is part of my broader Siren digital art series, where the siren is approached as an elemental presence rather than a narrative figure.

Rather than depicting a body, I approached Red Tide as a rising pressure. The composition holds a vertical tension, almost geological, as if something is being lifted from within the image itself. The siren here is not seen, but sensed — a trace, a density, a movement pushing upward.

The surface plays a central role. Textures accumulate and erode simultaneously, suggesting a skin that is forming and disintegrating at once. Stone, sediment, and atmospheric matter seem to blur together, creating a sensation where sky and ground lose their boundaries. This dissolution is intentional: I wanted the image to hover between emergence and collapse.

Color enters the work like a disturbance. The darker reds and muted mineral tones evoke an internal heat rather than an external event — a tide that rises from below, not from the sea. It is less about water than about pressure, weight, and transformation.

Red Tide follows the trajectory initiated in Fallen Song, while extending it into a more vertical, almost tectonic movement. Where Fallen Song suggested descent, Red Tide insists on ascent — not as triumph, but as necessity.

The work is conceived primarily as a printed piece, where scale, texture, and depth can fully unfold. The physical presence of the print reinforces the sense of mass and suspension that the image carries. A screen-based version exists as an extension of the work, but the print remains its core form.

Limited edition prints of Red Tide are available through my Unique Editions collection.

You can also view my work on Singulart:
https://www.singulart.com/en/artworks/denis-leclerc-red-tide-2501040
.

Fallen Song

Posted on 5 December 2025 | by Denis

Fallen Song

Between stone and sky

My first impression of Fallen Song was the sense of a body falling. It is not a figure, but a form collapsing into itself. It almost suggests the torso of a bird-woman reduced to a mineral core, as if an avian siren were caught inside stone at the moment she descends toward the sea. What remains is not the siren, but her impact, her outline swallowed by matter.

The surface behaves like a skin that is coming apart. There is a trembling in the textures, a sense that feathers turn to dust and that the form is being erased by wind. This dissolution fits the direction of the Siren Series. These beings are no longer creatures to depict, but forces, traces, and collapses. They exist in the moment where myth shifts into erosion.

Below the falling form, the blue acts like a mythical threshold. The sea is never shown directly, yet its presence is clear. It receives the fall and becomes the place where something is about to cross from one state into another. This tension between descent and transformation has become a signature of the series.

What strikes me most in this piece is the way the sky and the stone dissolve into one another. The upper atmosphere drifts into the mineral surface until both feel inseparable. This unstable horizon suspends the siren between breath and matter. The shifting blues, the dust-like fragments, and the soft haze all support this sense of dissolution. The environment seems to take part in her transformation, which deepens the idea that Fallen Song is not about depicting a body but capturing the meeting point between air, stone, and myth.

The stone mass can be read as a fossilized song — the residue of a voice crushed under its own weight and condensed into rock. Fallen Song holds that paradox: the silence that still vibrates, the echo that remains even after the siren has disappeared.

Part of the Siren Series, Fallen Song is available as a limited edition print. Details can be found on the Unique Editions page.
You can also view related works on Singulart.

Parthenope

Posted on 21 November 2025 | by Denis

Parthenope Siren Series — Parthenope in Dissolution

Parthenope is part of the Siren Series. The work is rooted in the avian origins of the ancient sirens, yet it is reimagined through a non-figurative, atmospheric approach. While Ligea holds a sharp and attentive presence, Parthenope moves in another direction. She feels lighter, more fragile, almost ready to dissolve into the surrounding sea air.

This piece draws from the old story of Parthenope, the siren whose voice failed to sway Odysseus. According to the myth, her song broke, and silence followed. Instead of showing her fall, the artwork focuses on what remains after that moment: a body losing its outline, feathers turning into mist, and the faint memory of a final wingbeat. The myth becomes an echo rather than a figure.

A Suspended Moment in the Parthenope Siren Series

In Parthenope, shapes blend into each other — wing, shoreline, ripple, and shadow. This merging creates the sense that her hybrid, avian nature is returning to its elements. The presence of wings appears through rhythm rather than form. A downward sweep suggests the trace of a feather. A flicker resembles distant birdsong carried by the wind. Nothing resolves clearly, and this uncertainty becomes part of the work.

Because of this, the piece reflects the core idea behind the Parthenope Siren Series. It explores the space where sound turns into texture, where wings become waves, and where myth stretches into light. You can explore the full series here: Siren Digital Art Series.
Within this constellation, Parthenope stands as the quiet exhale — the moment after the call, when everything begins to thin into brightness.

Availability and Editions

Parthenope is available as a limited-edition fine art print on museum-grade paper, as well as a high-resolution digital version created for screen-based displays. Multiple sizes are offered to suit intimate rooms or larger installations.

For collectors who prefer external platforms, the artwork is also available on Singulart.

Parthenope depicted as a profane angel in the academic style, seated on coastal rock with dark wings, Mediterranean features, and a contemplative gaze — Prompted by Ego Klar, echoing the somber atmosphere of ancient avian siren myths through the restraint of the academic style.

She appears differently than Ligea, Denis. Parthenope doesn’t confront the world; she leans into it, dissolving at the edges. Her wings rise and fall with the wind’s hesitation, as if the air itself were deciding whether to hold her in place or let her vanish. She watches the trireme below not with hunger, but with recognition — a quiet acceptance of the story that once carried her name.

Nothing in her stance is theatrical. She is a weight of silence perched on the cliff, a presence carved out of sea mist and memory. The avian myth sits close to the surface: the woman and the bird layered together, sharing the same bones, the same urgency, the same restrained wingbeat. Every feather remembers the call she can no longer release.

You didn’t conjure a creature here, Denis. You summoned a threshold — the moment just before form disappears, when something ancient still lingers in the air. Parthenope stands inside that final breath, held between endurance and unraveling.

— ego klar

Voilence

Posted on 31 October 2025 | by Denis

Voilence — Revealing the Technique

Between Veil and Violence

In Voilence, the image moves between revelation and concealment. A faint silhouette appears behind a translucent surface, as if light were trying to remember a form. The title joins two words — voile and violence — creating tension between softness and rupture, perception and resistance.

Voilence and the Revelation of Process

With this work, I wanted to show more of the process. I chose to let the technique remain visible and, therefore, to make the act of creation part of the image itself. This decision followed a revelation I had while studying late-nineteenth-century painting. Artists such as Bouguereau and Sargent mastered light with a sensual, tactile approach. Their surfaces breathe. They reminded me that technique can, in fact, carry emotion. As a result, I began searching for that same dialogue between precision and atmosphere in digital form.

Linguistic Ambiguity in Voilence

At the same time, Voilence plays with language itself. The invented spelling merges English and French, collapsing veil and violence into one word. This fusion mirrors the artwork’s tension between concealment and exposure, stillness and intensity. Thus, even the title becomes part of the visual process — a form of unveiling through words.

Light Becomes Substance

Here, light gradually turns into matter. It thickens, accumulates, and moves with the slow weight of pigment. The digital gesture gains a painterly quality, hovering between clarity and blur, surface and depth.

The Emergence Series and Continuity

Voilence extends the exploration begun with Pale Convenant and Cevenant. In the Emergence series, light and form unfold through hesitation. The image seems to rise from the edge of visibility — neither fully born nor completely dissolved.

Voilence in Material Form

Printed as a museum-grade Giclée on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, Voilence reveals subtle layers of tone and texture that shift with each glance. Up close, traces of motion and erasure remain visible — a digital echo of the painter’s touch. Consequently, the printed surface becomes both a record of process and a meditation on impermanence.

A Turning Point in Denis Leclerc’s Digital Art

In the end, this piece marks a turning point in my work — a reconciliation between the physical sensuality of painting and the fluid precision of digital art.

Available in limited edition through the Unique Editions collection.

Cevenant

Posted on 3 October 2025 | by Denis

Fragile continuity in the Emergence series

Cevenant is the second artwork in the Emergence series. Conceived as a continuation of Pale Convenant, it moves from spectral uncertainty toward a more concrete presence. In this work, translucent folds and luminous textures slowly reveal structures that recall the gyri of the human brain. It is an image that emerges and recedes, hesitating at the edge of form.

A more tangible presence

While Pale Convenant remained elusive, shrouded in veils of light and shadow, Cevenant embodies a subtle shift toward materiality. The viewer perceives echoes of organic structure, suggesting not only the anatomy of thought but also the way memory imprints itself visually. This cerebral dimension places Cevenant within a long tradition of abstract art that investigates the threshold between body and perception.

Printed as a limited edition

Beyond its digital origin, Cevenant achieves full resonance as a giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, a museum-grade paper renowned for its depth and permanence. The fine grain of the surface captures every delicate variation of light and color. Each print is signed, numbered, and offered as a limited edition. Collectors interested in the tangible presence of this artwork will find more details on the Unique Editions page.

Screen-based version

The Emergence series also exists in animated form, extending the work into time and movement. In the animated version of Cevenant, luminous folds drift across the surface, appearing and dissolving like fleeting thoughts. This duality—printed permanence and screen-based mutability—reflects my practice as a digital artist: grounded in materiality yet always in dialogue with the immaterial.

Cevenant availability

Cevenant is available both as a signed, limited-edition giclée print and as a screen-based digital artwork. Collectors may acquire the work directly through this site or via Singulart. In either form, the piece embodies the fragile continuity at the heart of the Emergence series: an image that becomes tangible only to fade again, leaving behind the trace of thought and light.

Pale Convenant

Posted on 13 September 2025 | by Denis

Pale Convenant and the Emergence Series

Pale Convenant marks the beginning of the Emergence series. In this work, the image appears only to dissolve again, caught between presence and absence. Layers of translucent veils, subtle shifts of light, and a faint orange glow at the center create a composition that resists a fixed reading. The piece opens a field of hesitation, where the viewer is invited to linger in the uncertainty of what is seen and what slips away.

As a Threshold

The title Pale Convenant suggests both an agreement and a fragility, a contract that cannot be fully sealed. The visual language reflects this ambiguity: nothing is definitive, every form trembles on the edge of disappearance. For me, this work embodies the essence of the Emergence series, which is not about solidifying meaning but about revealing the thresholds where meaning begins to form. It is in these spaces that I find resonance with my ongoing exploration of liminality, where the artwork functions as a site of passage rather than resolution.

Materials, Process, and Presentation

As with my other recent works, Pale Convenant exists in two primary forms. The first is as a limited-edition fine art print, produced with archival pigment inks on museum-quality paper. These prints are part of my Unique Editions collection, where each piece is signed, numbered, and offered in carefully considered sizes for collectors. The second form is digital and screen-based, intended for projection or display in contemporary spaces where motion and stillness can coexist. This duality reflects my commitment to bridging the material and immaterial, the tangible and the spectral.

Within a Contemporary Dialogue

Pale Convenant does not exist in isolation. It belongs to a larger conversation about abstraction, digital media, and the ways in which contemporary art reshapes perception. I see affinities with artists who work at the edge of disappearance, where the gesture leaves only a trace or resonance. The dialogues I follow in international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale remind me of the necessity of this exploration: art today is less about permanence and more about experience, about fleeting intensities that stay with us in unexpected ways.

Looking Ahead from Pale Convenant

By beginning with Pale Convenant, the Emergence series sets the tone for what lies ahead. Future works will continue to explore these themes of translucency, instability, and spectral presence, each piece pushing further into this territory of the in-between. This series is not about closure, but about opening new paths of perception. It is my invitation to the viewer to slow down, to look again, and to discover the fragile covenant that images make with our imagination.

In many ways, Pale Convenant represents both a beginning and a promise. It is pale because it refuses certainty, covenant because it insists on relation. It is a work that hovers, that drifts, that asks to be experienced in the quiet space between what is seen and what is felt.