About 25 people crowded into the Gallery, snatching up magnifying glasses and studying Leahy’s super-miniature airbrush paintings - like a skull on a grain of rice, or a nature scene on a matchstick.
But the focus of the show was five patriotic paintings on military dog tags.
Proceeds for the $500 pieces went to the U.S. Wounded Soldiers Foundation.
“It takes me about 20 hours to paint one of those - not counting coffee breaks, of course,” Leahy said. “But I love the work, and want to do something good with it.”
Leahy serves as an art professor at Stonehill College, teaches at the Felos Gallery, and is a past president of the Stoughton Art Association. He said he started doing the miniatures when a student asked him how to use an airbrush, and he fell in love with the medium.
“It took some experimentation,” Leahy said with a laugh. “I paint a lot on razorblades, and it took me a while to realize that if I started filing them down, I wouldn’t cut myself on them all the time.”
Leahy has painted for the U.S. Navy and Warner Brothers Publishing, but when it came time to do his first solo show, he said he had to make it in Stoughton. Leahy said Stoughton has a lot more artists than most people are aware of - like Felos Gallery’s Elaine Ostrander, who recently was commissioned by the Red Sox to paint a portrait of Johnny Pesky that the Red Sox legend received on his 86th birthday.
“I know most residents don’t know this, but the art community in Stoughton is just amazing,” Leahy said. “It really is the center of a lot of art for the area.”
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