Lesley Oldaker’s elegiac paintings are born from quiet observation. The artist collects the inspirations for her paintings from traumatic events consumed through the media. These landscapes of struggle echo a cry of human disquiet that calls to Oldaker, ushering the artist to look inward to her inner vistas of rejection, trauma, isolation, and a yearning of belonging.

Equally, the artist will physically survey teeming urban spaces, attempting to see figures as individuals, creating separate narratives for them: pulling from them a created identity to cradle them with. Oldaker is steeped in empathy for the suffering of others and so uses her paintings to connect the viewer to these experiences.