"Like language, art struggles with what is common, to disturb the individual habit of perception and, by disturbing it, to enable men to see what has been lived and seen by others. By upsetting, therefore, it tries to soothe, because it hopes to free each person from the tyranny of solitude."

Sebastian Faulks

Lesley Adès is a first generation Australian of French-speaking Egyptian Jewish parents. She is a doctor, researcher and senior lecturer based at the Children's Hospital at Westmead.

She trained as a paediatrician and geneticist and now works mainly with children and families with genetic disorders, congenital malformations and intellectual disability.

Lesley has travelled widely and has lived and worked in Switzerland, America and the United Kingdom. She participated in the New York Studio School drawing and painting marathon in 2001, conducted by Graham Nickson, Dean of the New York Studio School.

In 2002, she was a guest at the Adelaide Writers' Festival book launch where her art work featured on the cover of the Friendly Street Poetry Reader No. 26. She took six months leave from medicine to practice as a full-time artist in 2003, and 18 months leave from medicine to practice as a fulltime artist in 2009 and 2010. 

She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and has had seven solo exhibitions, with the eighth solo exhibition opening on March 17, 2010.