Lesley Hanlin creates expressive, layered compositions shaped by an interest in balance, movement, organic form, and the relationship between figure and ground.

Drawing on her design training and formal education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she brings a practiced sensitivity to composition, negative space, and the way forms interact within a painting.

Nature often provides a starting point—a wing, a botanical form, the movement of water, an animal or an unexpected pattern—but recognition is never necessarily the destination. Through layering, open space, shifting edges and intuitive mark-making, familiar forms move in and out of view.

Lesley lives and works in Northeast Florida, where observations from nature, interiors and daily life continually find their way into the studio. Her work is guided by curiosity and restraint—what to reveal, what to obscure, and when to allow a painting to remain unresolved.