USA / AGILITYPR.NEWS / January 04, 2022 / With its soaring mountains and lakes, Colorado reminds architectural artist, Leisa Collins, of her homeland of New Zealand. In fact, she includes a number of Colorado homes in her coffee table book, Hand Painted Homes: An Artist’s Pen and Watercolor Journey Across America. Most recently, to celebrate her love of Colorado, its spirit, culture and architecture, she created a series of paintings of Denver homes. She unveiled this magnificent collection this week. Her Denver House Portrait collection consists of 27 original pen & watercolor paintings.

While Collins’ focus tends to be on historic American architecture, she found Denver to be a beautiful mix of both old and new. She believes the city to be a magnificent example of downtown renewal and urban living. So, while the collection consists of historic Craftsman, Tudor and Victorian homes, it also celebrates impressive contemporary architecture.

Collins notes, “In the last couple of years, I spent time meandering around some of the residential areas of Denver and began selecting some of my favorite homes to be part of my Denver house portrait series. Sadly, I noted that Denver follows the national trend where older homes are torn down and replaced by the new. Some tear downs are warranted but many are not.”

“However, I also noticed that Denver homeowners often went to great length to build new homes that reflect the architectural history of Denver. Others put immense innovation into transitioning their historic homes into larger and more practical versions of their previous structures, creating impressive masterpieces in the process. I selected a number of these homes for my Denver collection as I feel they set a good example of how this can be done with style.”