Lessley Bender is a Bay Area-based artist and educator working primarily in oil painting and often experimenting with printmaking, film photography, and fiber arts. Their work explores the living world, human connection to that world, and memory.  Through surrealist portrayals of flora, fauna, the cosmos, and the human figure, they bring disparate moments into the close proximity with which they are perceived or remembered. Their most recent work seeks to understand how identity is understood, mapped, and intertwined with the organisms and landscapes that surround us.