About Leo

Leo Plaw

Leo is self-taught in many creative fields. He has had studios in Brisbane, Sydney, London, Berlin and Vienna. His artwork has been exhibited internationally in Austria, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Portugal and the U.S.A.

Leo’s early creative career was dominated by multi-media. He started out with computer graphics and animation, which led him into video production. Seeking to improve his animation skills he sought out training with a traditional animator. Later he became involved in a computer game production contracted to an American company.

After finishing the game project he left digital media for a number of years and started to work with oil paints. Over the course of the next four years he exhibited and sold originals and reporductions of his artwork throughout Australia.

Leo was also involved in the orgainising of a number of arts events in Brisbane.

With the Internet starting to come to the attention the general public and business, he once more became involved in digital media production. He became an active member of the Queensland Multi-media Arts Centre (QMAC) and worked on Queensland’s first multi-media arts festival. Through QMAC he also became part of the production team for W@RP TV, a programm that aired on Optus Local Vision, which focused on Multi-media arts. He was involved in planning, directing, filming and editing.

While working on this TV program Leo became involved with producing visuals for electronic music events and bands.

He teamed up with local Brisbane band Full Fathom Five to provide them with video, slide and film projections for their live concerts. As the band gained a following, Leo joined them on many tours throughout Australia.

Because of his multi-media work in the music industry, Leo became involved with 4ZZZ the local community radio station. He was part of the core team that provided the station’s first live internet broadcast of their immensely popular outdoor music festival.

By 2000 he had relocated to Sydney where he continued to work with touring bands. Leo went on to work for international bands and performers such as Salmonella Dub, Mad Professor and Lee Scratch Perry.

Living in Sydney was also an intense period of painting, exhibiting and selling artwork for Leo.

In 2003 Leo left Australia and travlled to Europe. He eventually settled in Berlin where he focused solely on painting. Leo also started to travel extensively to meet and network with other artists working similarly to himself.

Relocating from Berlin to London the brought Leo back to digital media again, specifically to website development.

In 2006 Leo started building the immensely popular beinart.org website for Jon Beinart.

In my London studio with Shoji Tanaka

By 2007 his artwork was published alongside some of the greats of Fantastic Visionary art in Jon’s book Metamorphosis. Working with Jon Beinart and being published in his book also brought Leo into contact with a global network of artists. Later in that year, Leo came into contact with Shoji Tanka and the International Fantastic Art Association (IFAA) in Japan. In April 2008, Leo was invited along with Luigi La Speranza to exhibit with the IFAA in Kyoto. Later that year, he returned to Berlin and secured himself a studio in the Atelierhaus Mengerzeile artist studio project. In the final half of that year he travelled to various exhibitions and events throughout Europe, meeting many more of his peers.

2009 brought more exhibitions and publications including his artwork. He started his own project website to document Fantastic and Visionary art, Fantastic Visions (http://FantasticVisions.net). This is an ambitious multi-lingual project drawing on sources from around the world. Later that year, he was again invited to exhibit with the Japanese IFAA, but this time in Paris. He has subsequently exhibited with these artists on later occassions in Paris.

He was invited in 2011 to participate in the Atelier an der Donau, artist symposium in Austria.

Leo was also on the steering committee for the Atelierhaus Mengerzeile for three years, helping to make decisions on the daily administration of the building, along with specialised events.

To date, Leo continues to travel and network with creatives throughout the world.

Leo and his artwork has been published in numerous books and magazines and resides in many private art collections. He has also been interviewed for radio and TV.