Louisville artist Howerton Leightty creates luminous and ethereal landscapes that are at once full of emotion and extremely understated. The exhibition includes 5 large-scale drawings and 10 small serial paintings. The small works are comprised of six-by-six inch panels that hang separately in a row, forming panoramic views. Leightty uses light and weather to evoke a poignancy that is greater than simply the scene at hand. She draws and paints layer upon layer, slowly building sweeping, but subtle views. Leightty’s large pieces, by contrast, are dramatic and bold, focusing on a particular part of a scene, usually a stormy sky, acting to magnify and examine.

Art critic Cynthia Rush in her article in Kentucky Homes and Gardens describes Leightty’s small work saying "...the squares isolate precise moments in a single experience in the same way that individual frames comprise a film." The viewer can explore the piece as a whole or just a section. The fact that the pieces can be appreciated separately adds to the ambiguity of the scene being depicted, when viewing the whole piece the squares obviously belong together but the separate pieces don't depend on each other to make sense. Rush goes on to say that "Leightty wraps her landscapes in cocoons of imaginary weather that emphasize her metaphysical concern with light as an aspect of time."

Leightty earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University in 1993. She has been featured in numerous exhibitions in museums, galleries, and cultural centers throughout the United States. She is also the recipient of various awards and honors, including the Al Smith Fellowship presented by the Kentucky Arts Council; the Siegfried Weng Purchase Award from the 49th Mid-States Art Exhibit; a Research on Women Grant from the University of Louisville; and a Kentucky Foundation for Women Grant. In 1998 she was selected by the Kentucky Institute for International Studies to teach "Drawing in Italy." Her work is in public and corporate collections such as the Evansville Museum of Art and Science, Fidelity Investments, Orvis Fly Shop, Inc., Trans Financial, Inc., and Jeffersonville Township Public Library.

Leightty teaches drawing at the University of Louisville where she also developed and taught the University's first course on women in the visual arts. Her visiting artist appearances include "Transforming the Curriculum" (Women's History Conference, Kentucky State University, Frankfort, Ky.), and "Feminist Pedagogy in the Foundation Studio" (Foundations in Art: Theory & Education Conference at the University of Virginia).