Leila Currah is a Californian artist and integrative wellness instructor whose work bridges mindfulness, movement, art, and the natural world. Known for her versatility, creative range, and willingness to experiment, she has worked across a wide variety of media including graphite, watercolor, oil, mural painting, illuminated lettering, leatherwork, and acrylic ink cut outs. She also practices ikebana with the Sogetsu school, a modern Japanese tradition celebrated for its creative freedom and expressive approach to floral design.
Her life as an artist began in early childhood. One of her first memories of making art is sitting for hours with her coloring books. She would line up all her crayons and pick one color at a time, coloring through the entire book using only that color, and then change colors, and do the same thing, until the whole book was finished. She never did one page at a time, and she always colored inside the lines.
She went on to take classes at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park, sketching plein air beside the lily pond and exploring painting, loom weaving, and basketry. Her parents and teachers encouraged her curiosity, which continued to expand through ceramics, life drawing, and AP studio art classes at Torrey Pines High School. She also studied watercolor privately with La Jolla artist Jenifer Broomberg. Jenifer’s influence is visible in Leila’s watercolor paintings to this day, and watercolor continues to be a favorite medium, especially when painting flowers.
During her college years, Leila studied with master artist E.J. Gold, whose mentorship helped her to see art less as a product and more as a process of inner effort and transformation. Her classes with him were deeply therapeutic and fundamentally changed her orientation toward her art and artistic purpose. With his guidance, she began to understand experientially that the creative process has the power to reveal deep insight that informs the process of living a life with greater meaning.
E.J. also taught her practical skills, how to care for brushes, cut and stretch canvas, and how to gesso large canvas. She contributed to his early JazzArt projects, often preparing canvases for monumental stage backdrops, assisting with installations at venues such as the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles and the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE), and discovering a love for jazz that later informed her own portraiture.
Parallel to her artistic journey, Leila earned her degree in Neuroscience from UCLA and continued her academic path at the University of Oxford, where she contributed to research in neuropathology. This grounding in science, combined with her artistic practice, shaped her approach to yoga and meditation.
Her teaching in yoga reflects this integration of science, creativity, and mindfulness, offering practices that support clarity, balance, and renewal. She sees yoga and meditation as living art forms, where breath and movement become expressions of presence.
In addition to yoga, Leila designs and leads fine art and craft workshops that celebrate the beauty of handmade objects. She often incorporates natural materials such as sea glass, driftwood, and botanicals, inspired by the coastal landscape where she lives and teaches. These creations reflect her belief that the ocean’s slow shaping of the shore mirrors the way creativity shapes and transforms the individual.
Leila brings an integrative vision to wellness, offering experiences that connect body, mind, and creative spirit. Whether through mindful movement or working with the textures of the sea, she creates spaces where participants can reconnect with themselves and the natural rhythms around them.
Leila lives in California with her husband and two children.
