Alice Leese grew up on the YT Ranch in Winkler County Texas, where she and her husband Rob still live and work. Alice is part of the fourth generation on the ranch and works alongside the fifth and sixth. The ranch was started in the late 1800’s by her great grandfather who came from Maine to the west. He drove a herd of sheep from Colorado to Texas, ending up at a railhead called Odessa and his new homestead. The working ranch now raises Herford and Angus cattle.
Alice graduated from Abilene Christian University with a BFA in Studio Art. She is a signature member of the American Plains Artists, a member of Plein Air Artists Colorado and the Outdoor Painters Society. She is represented by the Jeff Tabor Gallery in Santa Fe, NM. She was recently the National Parks Arts Foundation artist in residence at Fort Union National Monument in New Mexico and Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii. She had a solo show at the Ellen Noel Art Museum in 2020 that featured 40 works from the NPAF residencies and the ranch, including a large 6’ x 30’ painting of the Frying Pan Fire in West Texas.
She is usually painting the landscape of the ranch in the Chihuahuan Desert, including cows, cowboys, windmills, wildlife, the oil field, and the people who live and work there. Getting to travel and paint plein air is a treat and especially when it is somewhere like Hawaii, Idaho, or Taos. The plein air work is a way to inform her studio work, seeing and recording a particular landscape helps her to develop larger studio works.
