Lesley Richmond was born in Cornwall, England. Lesley now lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She received her art teachers training in London, England and her MEd in the USA. She taught in the textile arts program at Capilano University, Vancouver, Canada to 2003 while continuing her practice as a studio artist. Lesley now works full time in her studio.

Lesley's work is in collections in the USA, Japan, Poland, Korea and Canada, including: Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI, Art in Embassies, Dept. of State, USA, Libreville, Gabon, Africa; Baltimore Museum of Art, USA; Royal Caribbean International Corporate Collection, Eclipse Cruise Ship and The Central Museum of Textiles, Lodz, Poland. Her recent exhibitions include: Game Changers-Fiber Art Masters and Innovators, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, USA, 2014; Nature in Craft, Wayne Art Center, USA, 2013, Crafts Embrace the World, Choengju International Craft Competition Winners, Korean Craft Museum 2012, S. Korea and SOFA Chicago & New York 2011/12, The 12th International Triennial of Tapestry 2007, Lodz, Poland. Her work is featured in: Textiles - The Art of Mankind, Mary Schoeser, Thames & Hudson; Vol. 40 of the The Portfolio Collection and Art Textiles of the World - Canada, by Telos Art Publishing, UK.

Lesley is inspired by the architectural elegance of trees; tranquil and timeless.

Trees are an important symbol in many cultures. They are used in myths and legends and are generally a revered image. Their long lives allow them to watch over many changes in history. There is a change in atmosphere as one enters a forest, which could give a feeling of a sanctuary or convey a sense of unease. Forests have been used as a setting for countless magical stories.

Lesley photographs trees, focusing on the intricacy of their branching structures and then prints these images on cloth, using a medium that creates a dimensional surface. She then eliminates selected background areas, leaving the structural images of trees as the dominant feature. The images are then painted with metal patinas and pigments.

Click to view the article From Conception to Creation - Textile Artist.Org

Click to view the interview The Intersection between Craft & Art - Textile Artist.Org

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The Lace Cloth series reflect Lesley's visits to lace museums in Europe. Lesley realized that because of her interest in the concept of deterioration, her pieces often resembled lace. This textile is usually thought of as a prestigious fabric, using highly stylized images and painstaking handwork.

In the Lace Cloth series, she studies the growth structures of natural forms. Some of the forms she constructs with heat-reactive base reference antique lace designs influenced by organic structures.

Lesley is inspired by natural forms and textures and constructs textiles that simulate organic surfaces. She has always enjoyed the processes of surface design techniques and the countless possibilities of their different combinations. She makes textiles that suggest organic surfaces by changing the structure of the fabric, rather than imposing a design on the surface of the cloth. She uses distressing techniques and chemical processes to change the surface structure of the fiber into an illusion of organic decay.

In the Leaf Cloth series Lesley constructs textiles that explore the delicate cellular shapes and perforations of leaf veins. The finished fabric looks fragile, but is actually quite strong, not unlike the leaf-skeleton itself.