Launnie Long-standers: Leoni Duff Studio & Gallery

There is a painting near the middle of Leoni Duff’s gallery in the Old Brisbane Arcade. A woman walking with her children in the Central Highlands of Tasmania, the weather pressing in from all sides. There is a visceral, emotive quality to the piece, like so many of Leoni’s paintings.

The gallery around it has that same quality. White walls, steady light, the converted bones of what was once a bank and then a hairdresser, now hung with Tasmanian landscapes and portraits. Leoni has been here for more than two decades, still teaches art, and thinks about everyone who comes through the door in the same way she always has. “Underneath it all, being a mother, I just feel like everybody who comes in is someone you have to care for,” she says. “My goal is to encourage them, teach them, and build them up so they leave a happier person, with a new passion to paint."

That instinct came, like much of what Leoni has built, out of necessity and passion. Years ago, before Leoni had ever picked up a paint brush, her husband's IT business collapsed. They sold their property and moved to a small cottage in the country with their children to start again. What looked like ruin turned out differently. Their kids explored the bush, building cubbies, spending their days outside, and Leoni, with a large shed and evenings to herself for the first time in years, began teaching herself to paint. She had borrowed a classical art study textbook from the university library where her husband was studying and worked through it with real rigour, sending work out to competitions. Soon her pieces began to sell. When invitations to teach on the mainland came, she packed up her art gear and went. No stranger to the ground floor, Leoni understood exactly what it felt like to not know where to start. “Survival is a great educator,” she says. “And necessity is a very good teacher.”

When her youngest boys reached grades 11 and 12, the family moved back to Launceston, settling in Trevallyn. On an earlier visit to the city, Leoni had noticed an empty tenancy on the first level of Old Brisbane Arcade, a former bank–then hair salon–stripped back and vacant. She went and knocked on the door of the owner, Don Pitt. She asked the annual rent, divided it by 365 to work out the daily rate, and made her proposal: she would use the space one day a week to teach art classes, and if it 'took off', she would pay full rent as soon as she could. “He looked at me like I was the strangest woman he’d ever met,” she laughed. He agreed, on a handshake. She added days as the income grew, eventually asking Don to let her paint the old wood-panel walls a crisp white. It was now a beautiful studio and gallery space.

Her teaching career kept expanding. One day, partway through a class on Italian art history, she floated the idea of a study tour to Italy. Her students agreed excitedly. When people asked if she had done it before, she told them no, but there was always going to be a first time. Later a reconnaissance trip to France led to a tour, which led to a visit to the French Pastel Museum and an invitation to return the following year as their international pastel artist. She later taught in France and the UK. “The whole thing burgeoned into a most astonishing art career that I didn’t plan,” she says with a smile.

Underneath all her tenacity and entrepreneurial sprint, Leoni attributes her success to something greater than herself; her faith. The move to the Central Highlands, the art lessons in her shed, and even the knock on Don Pitt’s door; she has a special way of understanding the sequence. “They appear random,” she says, “but they’re not. I saw the hand of God guiding my steps.”

Working in the Old Brisbane Arcade for many years has given her something special: the texture of a small community that looks out for itself. “We’re all friends,” she says. “We watch out for one another.” It is, she says, one of the things she values most about Launceston. “Launceston’s the perfect size. When you go a bit bigger, loneliness is an issue. Here, your reputation travels with you, and people can tell whether you are the real thing.”

Her advice to anyone starting a business locally is to keep costs low, avoid going into debt, and treat people respectfully, because the people of Launceston are, “No fools” and will know immediately if you are authentic.

She is approaching 70 and thinks a lot about legacy. What she most wants to leave behind is harder to define than a building or a business. She talks about being salt and light. “People learn to trust you”, she says, “When they know you genuinely care about them, and once that trust is there, all the issues of life come up. The art room becomes a place where people talk about what they are carrying.” Leoni always endeavors to listen carefully and contribute wisely when she can.

“I paint because I have something to say,” she says. “It’s like a poet. They don’t write poems to sell them. They write poems because something has to be said.