Lesley studied Art at Ipswich College in the early 1980s and then went on to West Surrey School of Art where she was awarded a first class honours degree in woven and printed Textiles.  Following her teacher training at Sheffield Hallam, she taught art and textiles to secondary school students. 

Lesley has always loved nature and tries to find opportunities for walking in the countryside wherever she goes. In 2023 she returned to painting and in her current work she is exploring ways of expressing the experience of being out in the landscape of Norfolk and Suffolk.  She is particularly drawn to the area of land between the coast road and the sea in North Norfolk.  Her work straddles the line between abstract and representational  as she attempts to express the intense sensory experience of that landscape; the sights, sounds, smells and feeling of the place, which has become something of an obsession.