Sculptor, photomontage artist, architect and teacher born in Broadwell, Gloucestershire. After serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, from 1947 until 1953 he studied architecture and town planning at Liverpool University, and during this period started working on abstract sculpture. He was an assistant to Barbara Hepworth, 1953–54, and then again in 1957, in the meantime, in 1954, having joined the Penwith Society of Arts. He worked as an architect for the London County Council between 1954 and 1957 and then, part-time, at Truro for two years in the early 1960s. Beginning in 1964, he had solo exhibitions, including at the New Vision Centre Gallery, London, the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, and Portsmouth City Art Gallery. In 1966, he obtained a teaching post at Exeter School of Art and, with his wife, Pat, moved into West Leaze, a Modernist house with a large garden, at Aldbourne, Wiltshire. Here, in 1969, the Leighs organised the ‘Sculpture in a Landscape’ exhibition which, in addition to Leigh’s own work, included pieces by Henry Moore, William Pye, Austin Wright, Hubert Dalwood and Denis Mitchell. Leigh’s only known public sculpture, a 4-metre-high, red concrete sculpture, Sagitta (dated 1969), formerly sited on Stanley Road, Bootle, Merseyside, is in storage with Sefton Borough Council.
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; The Guild of Wiltshire Artists Blog: ‘Sculpture in a Landscape 1969–2020 (14 August 2020); E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, p. 53
Emma Roberts, 2012; revised, Terry Cavanagh, November 2025