About & Exhibitions

I didn't go to art school. I didn't finish high school either. I grew up in a small Texas town where people got married young, stayed stuck, and nobody talked about dreams. I moved out at 15 and figured the rest out on my own.
What I figured out was business. I spent decades building and running companies, managing people since I was 19, starting things from scratch and seeing them through. I know how to build something real. When I turned to art full time in 2025, I brought all of that with me.
Art found me the way most important things do — sideways, when I wasn't looking for it. First through crochet in 1986, then through a paint-by-number kit during the pandemic that cracked something open I didn't know was closed.
Today I work full-time out of my studio in Texas where I create original paintings, pyrography, and mixed media works. My work is symbolic, surreal, and narrative-driven. It deals with transformation, thresholds, and the psychology of before and after. Doors that don't open. Rooms that hold memory. Moments caught between what was and what's next.
I spent years serving in executive leadership working inside the recovery world — building community, witnessing people rebuild their lives from the ground up. That world is in everything I make. Not as subject matter, but as understanding. I know what it means to carry something heavy into a room and leave it there in the work.
My collectors are people who want more than something beautiful on their wall. They want something that knows something. Something that stays with them.
If a piece stops you — if you find yourself coming back to look at it again — that's not an accident. That's the work doing what it was made to do.
Original work is available in my shop. Prints of select pieces are also available for collectors who want to start there. For commissions, please use the form below — I take a limited number each year and I ask for creative latitude.
View Available Work
Commission Inquiry
Woman with short dark hair sitting and smiling, wearing a black graphic t-shirt and colorful pants, in front of acrylic paintings and a brick archway depicted on a cardboard canvas, in an indoor art studio.
Leslie Wisenbaker signature with her name written below. 
"I believe art is deeply personal. Most people know right away when something speaks to them — before they have the words for it, and without needing permission from anyone else.
When you spend time with my work, what matters to me is how it lands with you. You don’t need my backstory, my process, or a formal explanation to connect with a piece. Those things matter to me as the artist, but they aren’t a requirement for you as a collector.
I don’t expect you to see what I see. I trust your response, your intuition, and your own experience. If a piece stays with you, if it pulls you back for another look, that’s enough. You’re not missing anything.
I make the work and then let it go. What it becomes for you is where its real life begins."

Selected Exhibitions & Accolades

While my work is deeply rooted in personal intuition, it is also rigorously vetted by independent curators and institutional panels. Below is a record of selected juried exhibitions and community service frameworks.

Selected Juried Exhibitions

  • 2026 – Fresh Ideas, Lewisville Grand Theater Main Art Gallery, Lewisville, TX

    • Juror: Shelby Bennett, Dallas Museum of Art

    • Accepted work: Amends

  • 2026 – Hotter ’N Hell National Juried Exhibition, Orville Hanchey Gallery, NSU, Natchitoches, LA

    • Juror: Michael Williams, MFA

    • Accepted work: Waiting and The Table

  • 2026 – Punk Love, Greater Denton Arts Council — Festival Hall Gallery, Denton, TX

    Accepted work: White Rabbit #7

  • 2026 – Open Theme Annual, Webster Arts Gallery, Webster Groves, MO

    • Juror: Alex Johnmeyer

    • Accepted work: The Garden We Carry

  • 2026 – Ghosts and Things Regional Exhibition, Texarkana Regional Arts & Humanities Council, Texarkana, TX

    • Selection Committee: TRAHC Adjudication Panel

    • Accepted work: A Ghost Story

  • 2023 – Art of Recovery, Benefit Exhibition, Solutions of North Texas

  • 2022 – Art of Recovery, Benefit Exhibition, Solutions of North Texas

Commissions & Collections

  • Selected commissioned works including murals, mixed-media furniture, and symbolic portrait commissions.

  • Works held in private collections across the United States.

Leadership & Community Service

  • Board Member & Acting Secretary – The Art Room, Denton, Texas (November 2025–Present)

  • Board Chair – The Recovery Art Collective, Texas (2024–2025)