Artist Spotlight | Leo du Feu - Art in Healthcare

This week we are spotlighting the brilliant artist Leo du Feu who leads our Room for Art workshop at The Edinburgh Portrait Gallery and has worked with Art in Healthcare for fourteen years! Leo shares his experience and practice below.

Image: Leo du Feu in Burntisland Station Studio, 2025

Leo:

I’ve been an artist freelancer with Art in Healthcare since 2012 and been in our Room for Art social prescribing project since its start, however long ago that was. Room for Art is so friendly, supportive, caring, freeing. It’s so inspiring and so important. We have grown such a special community of participants, volunteers, artists, peer support, Art in Healthcare staff… Being one of Room for Art’s lead artists is a delight and I look forward to my Monday mornings at the Portrait Gallery so much.

I love the free-flowing nature of my group. I love coming in not knowing what each participant will get up to that day. I love going round chatting, listening, offering guidance. I love seeing what everyone creates! I love being supported by our brilliant volunteers and peer support workers. I love how supportive everyone is of each other, how often participants help and inspire each other with new creative ideas.

We have a lot of fun!

My 14 years with Art in Healthcare have brought a lot of depth to my own creative practice too. I have worked alongside lots of professional artists and so many inspiring participants – when surrounded by creative people you can’t help but be motivated and inspired.

And my own practice – I’m a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art. I’m a painter, based among the birdlife and sealife of Fife on Scotland’s east coast. I paint land and nature, drama and colour, story. I love creating my work out in the landscape and I love painting back in my beautiful railway station studio in Burntisland. I love painting on a large scale and I love painting in miniature. The Isle of May is probably my most important of all inspirations, and my rail explorations in my role as ScotRail Community Rail Champion are a close second.

Image: Leo du Feu, Isle of May cliffs

I’m really looking forward to summer when we’ll be offering our Room for Art groups a tour of my largest ever solo show, Homecoming, which runs at the Burgh Halls Gallery in Linlithgow from 22^nd May to 13^th September 2026. It’ll be fun having a group trip to my home town and the lovely big gallery, right beside Linlithgow Palace.

I hope you will go along to my show too. You can find out more on my social media and (soon) on my website. Best of all you can send me a message to sign up to my art newsletter – that way you never miss out.