Lesley’s work in encaustic wax is rich, distinctive, and vivacious – she seeks to “evoke memories of our landscape” and our relationships with the physical world. Despite the skill and intricacy of her pieces, she hasn’t always worked with encaustic; she worked as an acrylic painter for most of her career and only began to incorporate encaustic over the past ten years. Today, she splits her time and space between the two endeavors, a separation that allows her to give her works time to “grow into their own” and to consider characteristics that one brings out in the other. She is one of several Touchstone artists who work out of the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, and has accredited both institutions as being vibrant communities of artists.
Above all else, Lesley gives great attention to the process and intricate techniques that are required when working with encaustic wax. It is truly an ancient tradition, one that began with Egyptians using the process to create funeral portraits, artifacts that, remarkably, remain intact today. Today, much of the process remains the same as it did thousands of years ago: Lesley begins with creating the base mixture consisting of beeswax and resin, colored with dried pigments. She then uses a torch to create the rich texture that characterizes her work: this separates and splits the wax into lines and shapes that form the composition of the work. Her intuitive approach – she states she “works with however the wax speaks to her – allows for her scenes to truly come to life, forming flowing lines and deep textural patterns.
What makes Lesley’s work truly remarkable is her ability to create recognizable settings and themes that make the scene truly come alive. Whether she is depicting her native home of Scotland or modern ecological themes, Lesley seeks to address environmental issues. This concern first came to the forefront of her mind on a trip to Iceland: she was shocked by the shrinkage of glaciers happening “before her eyes” and found that it was disconcertingly similar to other ecological changes she observed in Scotland, such as seeing various maritime creatures being “strangled by pollution.” These themes emerge in her encaustic work, depicting issues such as shrinking of glaciers (Glacier Melt) and wildfires (Hope After Fire) in order to bring awareness to these changes happening in the environment around us. Despite the heaviness of these topics, her work is enlivened by a sense of hope: much of her work also centers upon ideas of growth and regeneration. She reminds us that in spite of the damage humans are causing to the environment, nature, above all else, remains resilient: there is a chance for the course to be reversed and the clock to be turned back.