Lesley Richmond was born in Cornwall, England. Lesley now lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She received her art teachers training in London, England and her MEd in the USA. She has taught in the textile arts program at Capilano College, Vancouver, Canada since 1973 while continuing her practice as a studio artist.

Lesley's work is in collections in the USA, Japan, Poland and Canada. Her recent exhibitions include works in Palmbeach3, 2009, SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York, 2008, the Fiberart International 2007, Pittsburg, the 12th International Triennial of Tapestry 2007, Lodz, Poland and the 5th. Cheongju International Craft Competition 2007. Her work is featured in Vol. 40 of the The Portfolio Collection and Art Textiles of the World - Canada, by Telos Art Publishing.

Lesley is inspired by natural forms and textures and constructs textiles that simulate organic surfaces. She has always enjoyed the processes of surface design techniques and the countless possibilities of their different combinations. She makes textiles that suggest organic surfaces by changing the structure of the fabric, rather than imposing a design on the surface of the cloth. She uses distressing techniques and chemical processes to change the surface structure of the fiber into an illusion of organic decay.

In the Leaf Cloth series Lesley constructs textiles that explore the delicate cellular shapes and perforations of leaf veins. The finished fabric looks fragile, but is actually quite strong, not unlike the leaf-skeleton itself. The Feather Cloth pieces explore the fragility and elegance of feather structures.

The Lace Cloth series reflect Lesley's visits to lace museums in Europe. Lesley realized that because of her interest in the concept of deterioration, her pieces often resembled lace. This textile is usually thought of as a prestigious fabric, using highly stylized images and painstaking handwork.

In the Lace Cloth series, she studies the growth structures of natural forms. Some of the forms she constructs with heat-reactive base reference antique lace designs influenced by organic structures.

Lesley's current work is inspired by the architectural elegance of groupings of trees, which she photographs, focusing on the elegance of their branching structures. She prints these images on cloth, using a medium that creates a dimensional surface. She then eliminates selected background areas, leaving the structural images of trees as the dominant feature.