Leo Mancini-Hresko – Portrait Painting

Portrait Painting with Leo Mancini-Hresko: The Live Model as Landscape

Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 6:00 PM

RAA&M Members: $35 | Non-Members: $45
Zoom Members: $20 | Zoom Non-Members: $25

Join Leo Mancini-Hresko at the Rockport Art Association & Museum for a portrait demonstration exploring his approach to painting the human head and how it closely parallels his method for painting the landscape. Over the course of the demonstration, Leo will discuss local color, light and shade, and the importance of working from the general toward the specific in order to achieve a strong likeness.

Throughout the demo, Leo will be happy to answer questions, and a selection of his portrait work will be on view during the event.

Leo Mancini-Hresko (b. 1981) is a Boston-based painter with a lifelong devotion to drawing, painting, and the living traditions of the craft. His earliest engagement with art began in childhood through 1980s graffiti, which was thoughtfully redirected in his teens toward figure drawing and painting.

During a study abroad program in Italy in 2000, Leo discovered the Florence Academy of Art, where he studied before joining the faculty and remaining part of the school until 2011. During his years at the Academy, he served as Director of the Drawing Program for Sculptors, taught plein air painting workshops, and lectured extensively on artist materials.

Since 2012, Leo has worked from his studio in a historic mill in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he paints and periodically hosts workshops and events. He travels regularly to paint, exhibit, and teach, and has long lectured on the technical foundations of painting, demonstrating practices such as grinding paint from oil and pigment, preparing painting supports, and constructing works using sound, archival methods.

Although trained in historic academic painting methods, Leo became deeply engaged with Impressionism as a means of recreating light and color through the expressive, physical properties of paint itself. His practice moves between direct observation on site and sustained, deliberate studio work. Central to his studio practice is the belief that a painting can emit its own sense of light back to the viewer, achieved through layered surfaces, varied handling, and techniques that have animated painted surfaces since the Baroque. For this reason, he works primarily in oil paint and is drawn to its opalescent, jewel-like characteristics.

His paintings have received numerous awards and are held in public and private collections. He exhibits regularly and has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, Greece, England, Italy, Ireland, and Russia.

An active member of the Rockport Art Association & Museum, Leo lives and works in the Boston area with his wife and two children, continuing to view painting as a living, evolving tradition sustained by close looking, disciplined craft, and an ongoing conversation with the past while looking forward.