Hi there :) I’m Leslie, an artist and museum conservation technician currently living in Nashville, Tennessee. I moved here after graduating from the University of Virginia in the spring off 2022, where I earned my Bachelor’s in Art History.

During undergrad, I explored the art world by throwing myself into as many different spheres as I could; I worked as a figure model for the McGuffey Art Center’s long running figure drawing program, volunteered as a docent for the Fralin Museum of Art, taught a class on Contemporary Art Business for the Arts Administration Program, and culminated my academic career by writing a senior thesis. My thesis was titled “Reconciling Salvador Dali’s Uneasy Situation within the Canon of Modern Art”, and through the project I explored modern art through the career of Salvador Dali and his interactions with American culture, mass media, and commercialization.

Since moving to Nashville, I’ve worked freelance as a Museum Conservation Tech and Project Manager. I’ve gotten to handle artifacts and art at museums like the Tennessee State Museum, The National Museum of African American Music, and the Stone Mountain Museum. Initially, I learned the ins and outs of carpentry and macro artifact planning, and I built custom crates, t-frames, and palettes for furniture, sculpture, and paintings. I’m especially interested in the mechanics of project management and how large scale projects are organized and optimized, which is where my type A side complements my artistic side.

I specialize in oil painting, with subject focuses in figurative work and surrealism. I am a completely self taught, although I owe my skills to my parents, who always made sure I had crayons and all the paper I could ruin growing up. I started working on commission in 2015, and have since divided my time between commissions and independent work. My art is motivated by a curiosity for the psyche and how we interact with our perceptions of ourselves and our emotions. I’m particularly interested in experimenting with color as a means to remove my paintings from a sense of reality; by rendering dreamscapes and embodying escapism I give myself and the viewer a reprise from the negativity that comes with our contemporary world. Sometimes things have a deeper meaning, but sometimes it’s just about putting something beautiful into the world, and you can decide which is which.

My first and most prominent influence was sign painter, artist, and my late grandmother Diane Perl. I grew up surrounded by her work and inspired by the dual playfulness and darkness of her style, and it was in attempting to imitate her work that I developed my passion and style. I admire the work and philosophy of the Surrealist movement of the 20th century, and particularly the work of Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, and Giorgio de Chirico. My favorite painting is Dali’s Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968 - 1970 ), although my spark into Surrealism was Magritte’s La Condition Humaine ( 1933).The psychological nature of the Surrealist’s work has a particular poignancy in today’s day and age, and I like the idea of updating their thought process and bringing it to terms with our globalized world.