Lesley Riley

About the Artist

Lesley Riley never intended to be a full-time, professional artist. She just followed her passion in the small blocks of time she carved out while raising six children. Now, as an internationally known instructor and multi-media artist, Lesley works in botanical printing, mixed and digital media, paint and of course, fabric. In 1999 she turned her initial passion for fabric, photos, color and the written word into a dream occupassion that continues to delight and inspire creatives and art lovers everywhere. A quilter since 1971, Lesley has an extensive background in using color and pattern to create innovative art quilts, fabric collage and modern botanical prints.   Lesley has written several books and articles and has been a guest on several episodes of Quilting Arts TV, profiled on The Quilt Show and is an educator for Golden Artist Colors. Her line of botanical-inspired fabric is licensed with Northcott Fabrics. As a sought-after workshop instructor, Lesley’s focuses on motivating, inspiring and empowering her students to take their creative life into their own hands, while encouraging her students to take risks, think outside the box and break rules. Her emphasis is on understanding composition and using techniques and materials to discover and enhance the maker’s own creativity and unique voice.   Creativity abounds in an empty nest she shares with her high-school sweetheart husband on a mountaintop in Cascade, MD. You’ll find Lesley in her indoor and outdoor studio from sunup to sundown unless, of course, any of her 14 grandchildren come to visit. 

Artist's Statement

Lesley is a pioneer in taking the traditional cyanotype process into the modern digital age, blending the classic and contemporary to create truly unique botanical art. To create her modern botanicals, Lesley combines the cyanotype process with a little water (wet cyanotype) and leaves gathered from as close as outside her door, to wherever her travels take her, to create carefully composed original cyanotype prints. These camera-less photographic blueprints become the bones for her subsequent digital artistry, combining layers of pattern and color culled from her own paintings, artwork and photographs. Lesley draws on her innate sense of composition and color to present her stunning, large, yet intimate, visions of enhanced natural beauty that transcends expectations.