Leslie Clark

Leslie Clark, artist, designer of Nomad Gal Jewelry and founder of the Nomad Foundation, is a fourth generation Ojai resident. The passions of her life were instilled by her two Ojai grandfathers. One a stagecoach driver, cattle herder and forest ranger was elected sheriff of Ventura County in 1922. He taught her to love adventure and wild country. The other, an artist, taught her to draw.

After obtaining her master of fine arts degree from George Washington University she traveled to France to paint and had her first exhibition in Monaco. Since then, she has traveled and painted, searching for new perspective and old wisdom.

On her first trip to Niger, West Africa in 1994 she was to looking for exotic subject matter. A chance meeting with Wodaabe nomads took her on a path that changed her life. Raised on a cattle ranch in Ojai, she felt an affinity for these nomadic herders. After visiting them a year later and seeing the poverty they lived in, she decided to give them a gift of a cow. On her return the next year the family explained that the cow had allowed to remain nomadic. The realization that the relatively small sum of $200 could transform a family’s life made her realize that she could make a difference.

After showing in galleries in Monaco, New York, Santa Fe and Scottsdale she wanted to give the new subjects she was painting a more fitting home. In 1996 she opened Nomad, The Leslie Clark Gallery in Ojai to show her paintings of Africa along with the work of African artisans. The goal of the gallery was to tell the story of the indigenous people she painted and to help them support themselves selling the things they produced. Her jewelry designs are a way to present the beautiful work of the Tuareg jewelers to a wider audience.

In 1997 she started the Nomad Foundation to expand her humanitarian efforts. It continues today. The foundation built a center for nomadic life where a medical clinic, boarding school and adult education center provide health care, education and vocational training to thousands.

As a result of her experience with the nomadic cultures and their Saharan terrain she has been sought as an advisor and guide on four National Geographic films and advised six US ambassadors on an area deemed too dangerous for them to visit. She has received numerous awards for her art and humanitarian work including Ojai Living Treasure and being nominated for the United Nations Peace Prize.

She made her home half time in Agadez, Niger from 2002 to 2019 when she decided to retire from Nomad Gallery and sell her Agadez home. The incursion of terrorism into Niger had made living there too dangerous. Not willing to abandon her nomadic friends, she continues to direct the work of the Nomad Foundation remotely with local staff training new midwives every year. Today 87 midwives trained by Nomad Foundation staff provide the only health care to nomads in a remote area the size of West Virginia.

Now that visiting Niger has become impossible, she has turned her focus back to her beloved Ojai and the ranch she has known all her life. The horses on the trail, the cowboys working cattle, and the Ojai wildflowers are the inspirations for her newest paintings. She has come full circle--home to the ranch.