Lesley completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the National Art School, Australia (2021). He competed four times in the Archibald Prize and was twice a finalist in the prestigious Brisbane Portrait Prize (2020 and 2023). Lesley was raised in the Port Moresby suburb of Morata, which houses one of the city’s largest squatter settlements. Growing up in this environment led him to find art: Lesley found painting fascinating and a means to escape his reality. In recent years his work focused on hyper-realistic portraiture, mainly capturing Indigenous faces dressed in traditional attire. He says: “as a contemporary Indigenous artist, I try to capture an essence of what is still alive today and is expressed through their faces, before it dies out”.