BIOGRAPHY
Lesley Nowlin Blessing’s career covers decades of experience and expression. Growing up in and around the Texas hill country, Lesley’s introduction to photography came first through her father’s love of the lens. She capitalized on this passion after high school graduation, receiving a BFA from the Hartford Art School at The University of Hartford. Eventually, she returned to Texas and her love for the people and the natural landscapes of Texas continue to inform and inspire her work.
Lesley’s work is deeply invested in the way people see, experience, and locate themselves in the world. Across her body of work, this takes many different forms. As a young adult, Lesley spent time traveling and exploring the cultures of Meso-America, particularly the Latin American countries of Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba. Her work at this time was largely as a street photographer, recording the lives and cultures of the subjects she encountered through a lens trained on both beauty and technical expertise. She utilized her skills as a documentarian to support community endeavors and tell the stories of people in Austin whose stories were often not highlighted, the most notable example of this work being her portraits for The Workers Defense Project and the public theatrical work “Nickel and Dimed” at the State Theatre. Her investment in the community eventually led her to run her own independent gallery, supporting local artists while still pursuing her own creative work as well.
After closing the chapter on her work as a gallery owner, Lesley returned to her love of fine art photography. During these years, she took portrait subjects and transformed their images by experimenting with alternative process and other media to give viewers an experience of the ethereal while also adding depth and dimension to each work. As Lesley’s personal life expanded, both through marriage and motherhood, so did her experience of the landscape of human emotions. Loss and an evolving curiosity about both consciousness and the sublime became topics of fascination, and this personal evolution began to inform how she creates and views her work.
This fascination reaches its full expression through her current work Altered State. The work features landscapes exclusively from Far View Ranch, a sprawling property outside of Llano, Texas that is central to Lesley’s family life and a passion project of her late father. By capturing the landscape with her camera, then utilizing the image as a base canvas on which she creates a dynamic and kinesthetic experience of the work, Lesley captures a sense of movement and life within the natural world, while also suggesting dimensions to this world that are not visible to the naked eye. She achieves this by starting with a photographic print or Giclee, and then adding layers of texture and detail that include ink, pencil, metal leaf, acrylic gouache, and acrylic. The result is a magical interplay between image and imagination, infused by the artist’s deep connection to the land and commitment to a highly detailed and labor-intensive process of illuminating the spaces behind, on top of, and in between the initial image. In Altered State, we see the intricacy of a process that results in a sense of wonder and substance in what others might see as negative space, capturing a shimmering sense of beauty, hope, and consciousness beyond what eyes might see.
Click here to download my CV.
Click here to download my Altered State – Artist Statement