Selected Works

About Leslie

Leslie has been creating compulsively since she was a small child. To her mother’s dismay, she chose her own palettes for paint by number projects, turning them into works of impressionism. Her father would come home to find that she had adorned the entire driveway and sidewalk with colored chalk; when they took away the chalk, she fell back on much more permanent bark. The world was her canvas. Becoming an artist was not a conscious decision but a compulsory happening. Leslie has had a long career with many solo shows, group exhibitions, and public acquisitions and has owned galleries in Las Vegas and Asheville.

Much of Leslie’s work focuses on ecological concepts. Many of her paintings condense relatively complex scientific scenarios into single images. These works include butterflies, bees, hummingbirds and other pollinators puzzled together with imagery of flowers from which they derive nectar and that they pollinate. Another ecological category Leslie explores is presented in "The Gifts They Bring" series, which depicts animals and what they do to benefit the greater ecosystem and humans. An example from this body of work shows a hawk puzzled together with wildflowers and suggests that the ecology of wild lands has interdependencies that are not a single connection deep. The hawk and wildflowers rely on each other.

Leslie’s work also focuses on technology. We rely so much on technology in our contemporary world; binary code (computer language) is our most prevalent form of communication. It occurred to Leslie that binary code is the new universal language. This revelation lead her to do a series of binary code paintings with messages people deserve and need to hear such as; “you are beautiful”; “you are extraordinary” and “f it, let’s dance.” Another technological series concentrates on music soundwaves and features soundwaves ranging from The Beatles and David Bowie, to monks chanting “OM.” Leslie finds not only the sound of music, but the structure of music to be beautiful.

Art, for Leslie is a powerful form of communication, sometimes visceral and sometimes direct, the purpose of which is to make the viewer feel joyful and loved and to heal and enlighten the viewer. Art is also an avenue to educate the viewer. Her hope is that if people understand the intricacies of the natural world more deeply, they will appreciate it and strive to protect it. In addition to an art filled life, Leslie has a graduate degree in environmental science. She and her husband have a crew racing team, “Lake Lure Racing.” Leslie has five rescue cats that never cease to keep her laughing and remind her to slow down long enough to pet them.