Born in Fergus Ontario in 1951, Lesley moved to Hamilton as a young child. She attended Westdale Secondary School where her art teacher told her parents that “all she was good at was washing paint jars”. Despite this early discouragement she continued to draw and paint dabbling in watercolours as well as oils.

A graduate of the University of Guelph with a BA in English and Fine Art and the Faculty of Education, University of Toronto, Lesley taught secondary school art in the public school system for over thirty years. Retired since 2005, she returned to painting.

Lesley’s work has always been organic but over time it has moved from being heavily abstracted to non objective allowing the viewer to take something personal from each piece. Working in acrylics her process is to layer and then edit, cutting out the clutter and dissolving form as it distracts from the essential elements on the canvas. Colour, texture and form, and how they relate to the overall composition or structure of the piece, are currently the most important of these elements.