Leslie Bender: Path of Jewels

Leslie Bender began her societal and cultural obligations as an artist in 1975, earning a Bachelors in Fine Art from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. After graduating, she worked with the Brooklyn Arts Council on mural projects in elementary schools and was subsequently hired as a C.E.T.A. mural painter in New Jersey in 1978. After 2 years, she joined CityArts Workshop in NYC and painted community murals until 1985.  Ms. Bender joined other politically motivated artists, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Downtown in Manhattan exhibited her political prints.

Currently, Bender creates paintings, drawings and prints in her loft studio in Kingston, NY, while exhibiting extensively in the Hudson Valley. She arrived in the Catskill Mountains in 1986, joining with the Woodstock School of Art. There, she contributed her printmaking expertise to the fledgling printmaking shop. In 1995, Bender got a degree in scenic painting for theater, and created many sets for regional theater and dance companies. In 2008, she earned an MFA in printmaking from SUNY New Paltz. A 2019 mystical experience aroused 5-dimensional luminosity into an oeuvre of artwork long devoted to the search for Self within the darkness of subconsciousness.

In 2024, Bender’s long held fascination with orchestra musicians was fulfilled with a grant from Arts Mid- Hudson. For a year, she drew and painted the Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra, and in 2025 had a one-woman exhibit of her art at the Ritz in Newburgh, NY.