Lesley Gering aka Fireweed is an award-winning Emily Carr Graduate, mother and motorcyclist who crosses the mediums with photography, film, writing, video, 2-D art and even fire performance. Her artwork has been published worldwide in over 50 publications and her photography and writing have splashed the pages in over a dozen motorcycle magazines internationally.

In March 2009, Lesley explores the themes of modern technology and ancient rites using lacquers, paint and used motorcycle oil. Her passion for riding motorcycles and for the ancient near east and Indian culture have brought her to the top of the Himalayas on small dirt bikes and into the archives of Eastern European engineering/scientific museums discovering that science and old mythology have links – you just have to look between the lines. With each stroke and each layer, sometimes taking as many as three months to finish twenty layers of paint on each work she pushes the boundaries of fabricated and body mechanics in humanity and machine.

Ascetics and meditation can be found motorcycling with full awareness on a mountain highway. It can also be as simple as reaching for a loved one with a kiss, holding your child in your arms or examining the internal mechanics of a 1520 cc motorcycle engine scattered across a cement floor. Focusing her energy on the texture and the meditation of getting to a place of deep layering with symbols carried throughout: an old poem, an ancient plaque from a Buddhist stupa in Katmandu, blueprints from one of her favorite motorcycle parts, sculpture from a tantric temple in Northern India, a detail from a dragonfly's wing, scientific formulas of "counter-steering" and other physics formulas that have become part of our day to day lives and mean something to her or her loved ones – the paintings combine two very different facets of life in a sensual way. This fusion of science and sensuality both holding a mysterious spell over the viewer to try to find more, to meditate more, to breathe more, to look deeper, to touch your loved one more…to find peace and love in this industrial place we call the City.

While wrapping up current series of paintings for her March solo show, Lesley has also been working on a "Pirate Ship Art Car" in Portland, Oregon. She is thrilled to start welding on this project, which will expand her creative toolkit, to explore more 3-D artwork and to develop a skill set with equipment which should later prove useful with larger, more kinetic art pieces, moving beyond the static 2-D paintings she’s been accustomed to for the last year. For her next show she’ll feature "Tantric Hubcaps" a series completed for the Brazen Show in Vancouver, BC. But she ultimately strives to keep pushing her mediums and working with metal, motorcycle oil, paint, hubcaps, lighting, mechanical engineering…because “it's all connected.” It's a process with similar themes that keep repeating themselves like some divine physicist that keeps dropping the same icons in her dreams: mechanics, motorcycles, sacred geometry, tantric & Buddhist philosophy and physics. Lesley is always hungry to learn more. Always listening to the right signs and taking action.

Another form of art that Lesley manifests is journalism. She has a regular column in a Canadian publication called Motorcycle Mojo Magazine and also contributes hefty travel features to various motorcycle mags in the States and in the UK. And if that wasn’t enough, Lesley is working on a book project called “Motorgirl,” a mischief-filled account of stories and photos from the road. The project actually morphed from the original book and an art calendar, “Women and the Art of Motorcycles," with proceeds donated to breast cancer research.

Lesley’s latest adventure was this past summer on a motorcycle trip around the Northwest, where she finished her three-week trek in Nevada at the infamous “Burning Man” art festival. Upon her arrival, she experienced over two and a half hours of white-knuckling through the desert during a playa dust storm - made a bit easier by her perfect off-road vessel: a 2008 BMW F650GS dual sport, that and her ability to balance accredited to her years of ballet as a child. She also attributes knowing the correct way to breathe and how to remain calm in an emergency situation as factors that helped her through the harsh ride. Next summer she’ll be riding the BMW K1200R, she claims “It's one of the fastest naked performance bikes in the world and a sexy beast.” Lesley adds that she never stops smiling when she’s riding it and there is always a gaggle of people around the motorcycle. And as she puts it “Trust me - there is nothing more fun than swinging your leg around a bike while a bunch of good ol’ boyz with their mouths hanging open watch a little girl with pigtails ride away into the sunset! Wicked fun!”