"The Language of the Spirit" is an excerpt from Lesley's thinking.

The Language of Art / my dialect

The Language of the Spirit

The passion that creates the innovation informs the Spirit.

The how is not important, the why is. 

Skill is only the medium

that keeps open the conduit

in order to hear the transmission clearly

The trained hand and eye, then has only to obey and read

the message, the code,  

and it will know exactly what to do.

"Content Creates Form"-

Content informs creation.

Artists do what they do in order to speak.

To secure an alphabet of their own making: that truly represents things

as they know them to be.

It's more difficult to speak then to paint half the time-–

Then why am I here talking? 

Because I choose to bend whatever medium I find myself in

in order to convey an intention--

If I were as clever as Mark Twain I would try describing everything

as though it's never been described before–-that is the work-–

to struggle free of every onslaught of cliche and make all languages my own.

Each thing has its own essential energy.  If I respect the nature of my subject,

it will tell me how to paint it.  You can't paint murder and a flower the same way. 

You have to transcend style to grasp identity.   If the art doesn't talk, it fails.

You have to make it up yourself, by listening inside:

where the picture lives...outside is only an inspiration, 

and being creative is an illusion-– 

Because the work is submitting to the voice inside and trying

to describe the pictures it shows you. 

And that picture comes from the experiences you live.

Then only will your pictures be unique, and you won't be a slave to art history

or style and trend. 

The responsibility is this: You have to either add something useful, really useful,

especially love which is lacking the most on this planet; or if you can then straighten out a tangle

in the communication, let someone else experience the same freedom you have been blessed with... 

Because, if you think being an artist or a human being

is just making more stuff, or, pretty pictures with no meaning or meaningful pictures

with no beauty, then the beauty in the empty pictures and the anger in the "meaningful" ones,

 is merely self-serving, selfish promotion for your own ego...

To make a picture is first an act of gratitude––

for the gift you've been given to transmit a message you've received and surrendered to.

That you are not the author of that message or even the messenger, but only a transmitter.....

No glory in it for you, just obedience to the Truth and clarity

of the power that sends the message.

After you get this idea and start to practice this in a real way, you won't be an artist anymore, 

but hopefully you'll have become a servant,

and one who wants and needs to help, rather than take.

That's the part about sharing the freedom, a picture has to move someone, feed someone's Soul,

inspire the viewer to become part of the transmission and add to the help all around,

otherwise that thing on the wall is just more of the collective junk 

and even worse than that.....

Because empty space has more promise

than junk does,

emptiness is a beginning.