Featured Artists

As a kid, I was always getting in trouble for drawing in class and doodling on tests. It’s no surprise that visual expression would be a big part of my life, but I never imagined taking the paths I’ve taken to pursue fine art, design and illustration as a career.

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I began a journey 6 years ago that I could not have foreseen taking. At 39 years old, I took one step to create a small watercolor painting of the 13th hole at Augusta National and a rainbow trout because my engineering job had me on a computer all day. Then I took another step and another step. Each step and each amazing person I met, pushing me further along. The path has led me to having my work hung at some of the finest golf courses and homes around the world. These steps have also allowed me to be in a place of enjoying my life fully as a full-time artist.

It didn’t come easily.

I feel like I was able to overcome a lifetime of doubt and fear once I took those first steps and shared the work I was starting. That sounds so simple and maybe it was, but the mind and heart are stubborn places and fear can be a brutal enemy. I had dear friends push me to see that I was blessed with something inside of me that I needed to pursue. My faith in God has taught me that he sees me in deep and personal ways and the fact that He has shown me more about how He designed my heart and how He has opened the doors that He has, just strengthens my faith in Him. I hope and pray that my work shows a bit of fearlessness and a desire to pursue passions.

I am passionate about the outdoors, golf, water activities, Gamecock sports, seafood and pimento cheese!

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My approach to painting is to use simple but interesting shapes, as well as true to life color relationships, to convey the essence of  the subject.  I prefer to paint on location, where the entire experience of the scene can inform my work. 

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Painting en plein air is full of challenges, such as fast-changing light and weather conditions, which require a hundred decisions in the space of a few hours.  I believe that these challenges actually elevate my  work.  They force me to grasp the single most compelling aspect of the scene, which then becomes the heart of the painting.

I sometimes say that painting on location is like racing in the Kentucky Derby, and painting in the studio to going on a leisurely trail ride.  Although they are vastly different, each has its place.  For example, a painter on location is usually limited to a smaller canvas.  To achieve a larger scale, I often paint a small study on location, which I bring home to my studio as a springboard for further work.  Supplementing the field studies with reference notes, sketches, visual memories, and photos taken on location, I can create larger works that retain the energy and immediacy of the field work.

Lesley graduated from Wake Forest University with a B.A. in Politics, and went on to Wake Forest School of Law, where she earned her J.D. degree.    After law school, Lesley joined the law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge and Rice (now Womble Bond Dickinson).  She became a partner in the firm, specializing in corporate law, particularly mergers and acquisitions.

 Lesley left the law practice in 2003, and turned her attention to painting on a full time basis.  She maintains a studio in Charlotte, where she works almost daily.  Recently, Lesley has served on the Board of Directors (including a term as Chair of the Board) of Arts for Life, a nonprofit organization that brings the arts to children in hospitals across North Carolina. 

Lesley is married to Carl Powell, who is a fellow avid traveler and hugely supportive “key man” in the painting practice. 

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Artists, out of necessity, have traditionally used their limited number of canvases over and over as they develop newer ideas. The art-history term pentimento describes how an artist’s previous work on the same canvas begins to bloom through the topmost layers.

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The luminous back-story behind, below, and beneath sends hints of itself to the surface. Bee Sieburg's life story is a lot like that. After a professional lifetime producing voluptuous floral arrangements and displays for weddings and grand catered events, she now paints - her first love. But for the longest time, she painted no flowers whatsoever. “Oh, I tried painting flowers, but it didn’t work for me,” she says. “Besides, flowers are a medium all unto themselves. Where I grew up, in Tarboro, North Carolina, everybody knew how to do flowers.” Recently, though, she has begun to paint flowers, connecting her present life with her former one. For decades, Bee operated a floral design studio called Wildflowers, in locations that included Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Annapolis, Maryland, and St. Louis, Missouri. When Bee moved to Asheville in 1997, Wildflowers, which she had run largely out of her basement, blossomed into a storefront and shop in Biltmore Village called The Gardener’s Cottage. The original Wildflowers pansy logo remains there to this day, although Bee sold the business in 2004. The sheer exuberance of being a cancer survivor, diagnosed as stage three in 2003, lights up Bee's vivid, light-hearted and reach-out-and-touch-the-moment oils. "That diagnosis helped me see clearly what I wanted to do with my time and energies," she says. "I am absolutely loving life!" After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill with a BA in Arts Education in 1964, Bee taught art to elementary school children prior to being drawn into the floral arranging business by a catering friend. She raised two children along the way, one of whom, Molly, is now an artist in her own right and shares a studio in the River Arts District in Asheville, North Carolina.

ARTIST’S WEBSITE