Leslie Bailey Western Artwork

Hey everyone! Thank you for stopping by and visiting my shop!  

      My name is Leslie Bailey and I am the lady behind the scenes. 

My art journey started at a very young age, I have had an art medium and a pair of reins in my hands for as long as I can remember. 

I had a job through high school starting young horses and training reining horses. I travelled to show with the NRHA when I could during the summer and it’s was incentive to do well in school so I could take some time off to compete while school was in session. 

During this time, I was enrolled in multiple AP drawing and painting classes. *fun fact: I was also a film kid and directed, wrote and shot short film movies and I was really good at it* It was in high school I had decided I wanted a career in the arts! 

However, life decided differently, I fell in love with the cowboy lifestyle. I stayed training horses for about a year after I graduated and had decided that I didn’t need a college degree to go be a wondering cowboy-gal. I strayed away from art for a few years. I worked at sale barns, vet clinics, an animal shelter, and I had finally gotten my cowboy job I wanted located in South Eastern Wyoming. So naturally, I packed my bags and left. 

That part of my life was the best and yet some of the most trying times I’ve ever had to face. I picked up two other jobs at that time, I waitressed for a bout a year until I got a call from the Wyoming Livestock Board and I had become a brand inspector. I remained working the brand job and the ranch for a while till a change in life (which later turned out to be the best change - I just didn’t know it at the time) had forced me to quit to ranch. This is the part where my artwork comes back into play! 

As a modern day brand man at a livestock auction, your day starts early. You walk the yards and inspect the critters (after a procrastination cup of coffee, of course). Walking the yards can take a few hours depending on the sale numbers, how many bovine you have to rope on foot to clip, or how many high headed sale barn rejects you have to dodge that day. After your yard work is done, besides the occasional semi or truck and trailer load ins during the sale, you’re bound to your office chair starting at a wall (or playing coolmathgames or solitaire on your government issued laptop) for the rest of the day till you have to check all the critters out to their new owners at the end of the sale. 

One day, I got tired of coolmathgames and flipped over the back of a brand card, I had used earlier that morning in the yards, and started to doodle with a #2 pencil. It was the first piece of art I had created in many years. It was a portrait of a bridle horse that I had later taken home and painted with a cheap palette of watercolor paints. This piece had become my number one selling sticker much later on in my journey. 

I started taking pictures of my daily brand office doodles and posting them. One day I had doodled a picture of a porcupine playing black jack, and after posting my daily picture, I had so many people message me saying that they wanted to buy it. That was the first piece that I had ever made any money on, and it was right there and then I knew that this was what I wanted to do. 

Flash forward to now - you are a greatly appreciated patron reading my art journey on my website! Artwork pulled me out of some very dark times, it has helped me notice the good and the beautiful things in life, and it gave me a path to pursue. I’ve met so many awesome, beautiful and inspiring people along the way! 

So, thank you for reading my story and being a part of what I get to do! Your support, purchases, and kindness have contributed to keeping me afloat in life, and for that, I am forever grateful of you all! Thank you for your patronage! 

I travel to vendor markets, music venues, ranch rodeos and many other events! So I hope so see you all on my adventures! 
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Thank you again!  
- Leslie P. Bailey