This painting is Oil on Canvas, measures 40x40cm and comes framed.

Born and raised in Dublin, Lesley and her family moved to Clonakilty in 2005.   They settled in a rural dairy farming community in a quiet valley just outside Rossmore Village.  The beauty of the local area and the infrastructure of farming has influenced Lesley’s practice for the last number of years.

She began painting local farm buildings during the first lockdown in 2020, when the 5-mile radius was in place. So the immediate locality became her focus.  She wanted to capture the ordinary things she saw everyday and to speak to the labour of farming by its environs.   The beauty of old farm buildings and in particular the rusted corrugated roofs hanging precariously to ruined structures once useful and part of the daily life of farming were a daily attraction to sketch and paint. This led to a whole series of paintings which have been shown in three exhibitions in Clonakilty and Kenmare over the last three years.

Lesley has been painting since she was a small child. She was taught by her late mother Clare and another local artist.  The whole family were creative and there were always books about art around the house. Of particular interest and inspiration were the works of Edward Hopper, Louise Bourgeois, Andrew Wyeth and Agnes Martin.  In later years her inspirations include Anselm Kiefer, Marlene Dumas, Maggie Hambling, Jenny Saville, Dimitri Desiron and Antonio Lopez Garcia.

Returning to art education was a big undertaking with a small family, but with huge support from family and friends, Lesley completed a BA in Visual Arts (DIT) in 2016 on Sherkin Island receiving a First Class Honour and where she was long listed for the RDS Visual Arts Award.  In 2017, she earned an MA in Arts and Process at the Crawford College of Art and Design (CIT).

Lesley’s work is held in private collections both in Ireland and abroad.   She exhibits regularly throughout Ireland.