Lesley Luce Art

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Canada
Toronto, ON
Lesley Luce Art

Canadian Artist 🇨🇦 "It’s important for me that my audience is captivated from afar and intrigued up close. I want my art to reward those who are curious."

05/31/2026

Queen of the North Atlantic 🌊 🌊

A layered portrait of Canada built from thousands of hand-placed paper fragments, vintage postage stamps, maps, archival images, and hidden stories.

From a distance, it reads as abstract, patterned concentric circles. Up close, it becomes something to discover one paper fragment at a time.

05/07/2026

Repetition gets a bad reputation.
People hear the word and think boring… predictable… mechanical.

But in my studio, repetition is something I feel compelled to do.
It’s an essential part of my self-regulation and my mental health.

With my recent (and clearly LONG overdue) ADHD diagnosis, I went down a full research rabbit hole 🐇📚 about repetitive movement and the brain… and suddenly my whole creative process started to make a lot more sense.

Turns out rhythmic, repetitive movement, especially with your hands, can trigger the release of things like serotonin and dopamine. The same chemicals connected to mood, reward, and emotional regulation.

When I’m placing shapes over and over again, my brain gets quieter.
Time kind of disappears.
And I slip into that zone where making feels necessary… and soothing.

For me, repetition isn’t about perfectionism.
It isn’t about decoration.

It’s about regulation.

WORK CITED:

Magsamen, Susan, and Ivy Ross. Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. Random House, 2023.

Cookson, Clive. “Why Our Brains Crave Beauty, Art and Nature.” Financial Times, 2023. https://www.ft.com/content/f881029e-c66e-4d01-b4eb-5e419cec4c12

Malchiodi, Cathy A. Research on expressive arts therapy and emotional regulation. PubMed, 2003. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12538400/

Recent clinical research on creative engagement and emotional well-being. PubMed, 2024. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38782244/

04/20/2026

My life has always circled back to paper.

As a kid, it was construction paper.
Bright colours. Glue sticks. Entire afternoons disappearing into tiny piles of scraps.

Later, it showed up again…
in printmaking studios, photocopy rooms, and stacks of paper that somehow felt way more official and adult.

I even managed a photocopy store at university…
which, in hindsight, was probably a very obvious sign
that paper and I were in a long-term relationship.

And then…
there was a long stretch where I stopped making art.

Not because I didn’t love it.
Not because it stopped calling.

But because I was scared to make things,
put my name on them,
and show them to the world.

Eventually, though, that calling got louder than my fear.

So I went back to paper.
Like returning to an old friend who never held a grudge.

Now I place thousands of tiny fragments
one at a time…

Which is either deeply meditative
or a wildly elaborate way to avoid folding laundry.

Honestly, still undecided.

But looking back now…
it feels like there was an invisible string connecting it all.
(Very millennial of me to weave in a Taylor Swift reference)

The construction paper.
The printmaking studios.
The photocopy store.
All of it quietly leading me to where I am now.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Sometimes the thing that keeps showing up in your life
is trying to tell you something.

And sometimes…
it’s paper.

04/14/2026

My work is built one tiny piece at a time

I create my artworks using thousands of hand-placed paper fragments arranged in repeating patterns. From a distance, the work feels bold and graphic. Up close, the details slowly reveal themselves.

Curiosity sits at the centre of everything I make. Each piece begins with research into subjects that intrigue me ( history, culture, stories, and unexpected details🤓) which I translate into layered visual patterns. 💫

Slow work. Tiny pieces. Big stories.

04/08/2026

Life Lately ✨💕🖼️🫟

02/07/2026

The thing that surprises me most about doing what I love?
Is how often I want to quit.

This is what it’s like being a Canadian mixed media artist who came to this later in life, with no formal path... or honestly really even a plan!

It’s vulnerable. It’s beautiful. It’s absurd.
And when it starts to feel easy? That’s when my brain panics.
But I’m learning: ease doesn’t mean fraud. It means arrival.

01/19/2026

The mic cut out.
But the vibes remained.

I was talking about The Educated Imagination; a book that cracked open my brain in high school and still echoes in my work today.
This new piece is named after it.
Built from fragments of Canadian literature and marginalia, it’s part memory, part map, part nerdy love letter.

And yes, I did deliver a dramatic punchline.
And no, we’ll never know what it was.

01/05/2026

“A Room of One’s Own, Composition 0317” is my layered exploration of creativity and the lives of female artists, past and present. Made of thousands of hand-placed paper fragments, the work reflects on what it means to carve out space for creative expression.

The circles weave together art history, literature, and personal memory, from Virginia Woolf and the Guerrilla Girls to Barbie. Each ring speaks to the tension between domestic life and artistic ambition, and the long history of women claiming freedom on their own terms.

In shades of blue with yellow accents, the center image nods to Canadian Impressionist Helen McNicoll’s Chintz Sofa, a quiet reminder of solitude, focus, and the power of uninterrupted work. From afar, the piece looks abstract, but up close, hidden fragments and stories begin to appear.

12/31/2025

What makes a country a country? Who gets to decide?

Mark of a Nation explores Canada’s evolving sovereignty through the quiet power of postage stamps. Each one is a micro-artifact, evidence of independence, protest, pride, propaganda, and memory.

I built this piece from stamps in my personal collection, layering them in concentric circles like an archival ripple. From a distance, it’s bold and abstract. Up close, it’s a dense record of shifting identity, what we’ve chosen to commemorate, and what still asks for deeper reflection.

This one’s about how nations define themselves. And redefine. And try again.

Address

Toronto, ON

Website

http://www.LesleyLuceArt.com/

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