Lesley Giles is an English artist. She lived and painted in London most of her life until she moved to Florida in 2003 with her American husband to follow his career. They re-located north to Cambridge Md. in 2012 to be near to Washington DC and Baltimore yet continue to be surrounded by water. Lesley paints in her studio overlooking the beautiful Choptank River. She is fascinated by the poetic, solitary beauty of the world around us: water, derelict huts, floating osprey. She works with traditional media to focus on contemporary issues like the effect of development on our landscapes and how the “ordinary” prevails. Saatchi International have sold three of her Eastern Shore paintings to collectors in California, Delaware and Switzerland.
“… The boldness of her colour is matched by a strength of design that is all too rare in contemporary art. Here is an artist with a down-to-earth sureness of vision that is immensely beguiling”
Andrew Lambirth, Art Historian, London
In 2019 her painting “Hurricane, Sundance Realty” received “Honorable Mention” in the national juried exhibition “Signs of the Times” at Gallery Clarendon, Washington. In 2018 she was commissioned by Blackwater Bakery, Cambridge, to paint a five-foot coffee cup for their restaurant. She exhibited in a new gallery, Kyo Gallery, in Old Town Alexandria and her painting “The Hill”, celebrating Ironman Maryland, was chosen by the Maryland Federation of Art to hang in the House of Representatives in Annapolis for three months.
“Lesley Giles blurs the line between traditional notions of landscape and graphic arts ….. Giles’s exaggerated colors and stylized patterns, as seen in her striped skies, separate her from earlier artists”.
Ryan Grover, Curator, Biggs Museum of American Art, Delaware, 2014
Lesley is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, (MFA) and Goldsmiths’ College, London University (BFA). She has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums in the UK, Europe, USA and also in China following a Visiting Painter invitation to Urumqi, Xinjiang in 1996. Her work has been published by Harper Collins in “Watercolour Masterclass” and “The Challenge of Landscape” as well as being featured in several magazines.
“Giles has also traveled to western England to paint the island of “St Michael’s Mount”. In Giles’s image the Mount is a cold, shadowy blue on the horizon, cemented to the strong black rocks”
Joseph Ruzicka “TODAY’S MASTERS” Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, May/June 2016
Recent series include “Eastern Shore – History Reflected through the Puddles of Time”, “Acid Sky Washing Lines” an exploration of the coast around England and “Oceanshore Boulevard” a linear journey along the Florida coast. She continues to be fascinated by water and fabrics in the landscape like washing lines floating in the wind or tarps binding unknown objects. Her style is formalized and post-cubist. Important influences are John Sel Cotman, Edward Hopper and fellow alumnus David Hockney.
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