Artist Bio
Leslie Clark is an artist who became an adventurous explorer searching for exotic subject matter. She never set out to change the world but wanted to learn about it and paint what she saw. After discovering the nomads of Niger, she turned from artist to humanitarian, focusing on helping the nomads improve their lives while respecting their traditions.
Earning a Master of Fine Arts from George Washington University, she graduated with highest honors and the first prize in painting. Her first exhibition was while she was painting her master’s thesis in the south of France. The success of this show in Monaco set the pattern for her life as an artist. She traveled, painted what she saw, and sold it to earn enough for the next trip. Each voyage was to a more and more exotic location until she landed in the Sahara Desert, where she found her place in the world.
As her expertise grew in a region little traveled by the rest of the world, she was sought by travelers as a tour guide, by US ambassadors for her knowledge of the forbidden north of Niger, and by National Geographic as a guide to making films about the cultures she had adopted.
Although her focus was the Sahara Desert, she visited over 50 countries on five continents and painted along the way. She operated Nomad, the Leslie Clark Gallery, for twenty-three years, where she exhibited her paintings alongside the arts of the cultures she visited. Each painting was to tell a story. She is a member of the Ojai Studio Artists, and her studio is open during their annual tour and by appointment.