Thinking in green Call of courting peepers revives grieving artist’s love of life, beauty

The night sounds of spring have captured the art of Lesia Sochor, awakening her heart and commanding her palette. The sounds of the darkness have exploded into brilliant greens, blues and yellows that leap off the canvas like the frogs they depict.

For the past three years, Sochor has swirled her paints in search of the singular spirit of the amphibians of the wetlands. She attributes her obsession with frogs to the musical voices of the peepers as they cast their mating calls into the night.

From her studio deep in woods overlooking frog ponds, Sochor has been able to blend those sounds of spring, along with the bellowing bullfrogs of summer, into a rich collection of paintings that has captured the spirit of the swamp.

Although Sochor has been surrounded by the sights and songs of peepers, tree frogs and bullfrogs for nearly 20 years, it wasn’t until the spring of 1998 that she felt compelled to pick up her palette and brushes and bring the critters to life on canvas.

Since then, Sochor has devoted all her energy to frog subjects, sketching them with pencil and painting them with oil and watercolors. She knows hers is an obsession and she is thankful that it overtook her when it did.

“I love them. They are so completely and entirely opposite from one another,” said Sochor.

Sochor’s only sister, Zenia, passed away in the winter of 1998. Sochor was wracked with grief for months. As the winter deepened, her despondency grew more acute. She found herself unable to sleep. As spring approached, she had reached the point where she feared going to bed because she knew she would toss and turn until dawn.

“I dreaded going to bed, night after night, and this went on for a couple of months,” she recalled. “Then one night that spring I went to bed, laid down and suddenly heard the peepers. It was so soothing. I completely, totally, peacefully fell asleep for the first time in a long time.”

When she awoke, she decided that the peepers had always been with her and helped revive her to the promise of life. Just as the spring revives the landscape, the peepers had reawakened her appreciation of life and beauty.

“I thought it was such an omen. I knew I was meant to paint these things,” she recalled. “They made me feel the cycle. Here I am in my despair, and when I heard these peepers, I realized how beautiful life is. I was completely inspired and I just love it. I’ve become consumed by these creatures, consumed by these amphibians.”

All that spring and summer, Sochor found herself beside the frog ponds, sketching. The frogs were always with her.

She would sit quietly near the pond in the darkness watching the creatures in the glow of her flashlight. Or through the kitchen window as tree frogs walked across the glass. Her painting “Looking In” features an ethereal tree frog on the glass staring inside at a bowl of red peppers.

“My son Max saw the frog on the window and shouted, “Look, Ma,” and I immediately began sketching it as it moved across the glass. I did the actual painting at night in the kitchen, just as it was.”

She now realized that frogs were part of her life all along. As young children, Max and Sochor’s daughter, Nina, had spent summers near the ponds, chasing and catching frogs. They would drape the frogs over their shoulders and collect huge gobs of the gelatinous eggs in buckets. Sochor has gone from asking her children to put the frogs back in the pond to spending hours gazing transfixed at the sparkling and shifting colors of their eyes in the ever-changing light.

“The eyes are completely magic,” she said. “They’re gold, they’re precious, they’re like jewels.”

Sochor said she realized how hooked she was on frogs after visiting Italy this spring. Though she was overwhelmed by the glorious museums filled with art and the magnificent squares and churches, she went to bed each night knowing that back in Maine the peepers were out and she was missing their song.

“Sure enough, my first night back, there they were. I really had come home,” she said.

A graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art, Sochor has worked in many mediums and painted many subjects. She said she never understood how other artists could devote their time creating a series of work based on a single subject. After having become obsessed with frogs, she finally understands.

“I really love focusing on just one subject. I just really love the attraction that it gives me, one painting leading into another. Day by day with the same image, it’s just amazing,” she said. “I actually thought painting a series was kind of snobby, but not anymore. I’ve got it, I’m totally involved and that’s the whole idea.”

Sochor said she was comfortable with her world of frogs and does not even consider whether another muse will enter her life.

“When I go to sleep, that’s what I hear every single night. I’m completely enamored by them,” she said. “I know that I’m going to paint them for as long as I can. I’m consumed by the image of these frogs. From my studio, it’s an image that is all around me. It’s a constant inspiration because I’m surrounded by it. Its presence is right there, all the time.”