Nelly R Lepe

I was born in Los Angeles California USA, of Peruvian father and Mexican mother I am the oldest of four siblings.

   From childhood I had the inclination towards drafting. My artistic formation was mostly self-taught. My early schooling was in the city of Lima, Peru, at the time, under a military regime.

   My ex-military father, a radar operator, soon entrepreneur, owned travel agencies where he organized expeditions, sharing with us, his children the experiences of the exotic trips, thus creating an interest for the ancestral cultures. My mother’s focus while in her youth was dancing, making her debut at the Teatro Degollado in the city of Guadalajara, México with world dances. Afterwards, she dedicated herself to be a homemaker and merchant.

   I  began experimenting with art as a professional at age thirteen, drawing and using color pencils, as well as any other substance like alcohol or other acids extracted from the chili pepper, which she I prepared myself, using natural materials to blur and create different effects achieving a variety of tonalities on the colors laid on paper. I started my first business at age 14, still in Junior High in Guadalajara, Jalisco Mexico. Painting textiles and making cushions. Soon after, I started making comforters  and satin sheets hand painted with diverse images based in the Asian, Egyptian, Mayan,  Incan Empire and other cultures, making myself known as a creative painter in interior design.

 My curiosity to find out how since prehistoric times, the early cultures discovered pigments, led me to the research and develop processes to obtain tints, oils, pastes, alcohols, etc. Mastering in multiple painting techniques. I worked for 7 years for  Tri-Chem USA Company in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, an international company specialized in quick dry oil paints for textiles, earning various acclaims at the national level for my unique techniques, not only applied to textiles as the company marked but showing the application in different surfaces and materials. 

   At the same time, I volunteered at a non-profit organization, for special needs children, advising and teaching the children’s mothers on how to develop new family businesses thru hand crafts and teaching them to work with recycled materials to create articles for daily use to support their families.

  I took on various study courses in Mexico, Canada and USA, learning to use diverse tools and materials. I opened up an art shop where I worked with ceramic pastes which I prepared myself and also started working in the dehydration and preservation of plants which were added to three dimensional art pieces,  exporting these to USA and Canada.  I started “Creativos Lepel” in 1992 and stood out as a female entrepreneur in my field having the largest variety of figurines in the nation, utilizing resins, fiberglass and polyurethane. Soon I added the manufacture of decorative candles, developing special paints to apply on wax and selling my own paint formulas, opening a bigger market for myself.

  I have managed interior design projects which utilized inclusions of stones, glass and other materials on paintings and murals, as well as furniture restoration and conversion.  In 2009 I was in charge of the rescue project of  “La Casa de la Cultura” in the city of  Tlaltenango, Zacatecas, Mexico, which it was demolished by a flood. I worked in the restoration of excavated pieces and woods dated from 1878 and in the “space utilization” project and distribution of art shops; also in 2009, in the state of Jalisco, I swear as Youth President  of “Partners of the Americas”, a non-profit organization created by former President John F. Kennedy for the support of the Latin American and Caribbean communities, charge that I vacated when she returned to her native country, USA. 

Presently I own “Lepel  Design” specializing in Murals, Faux Finishes and Restoration in Orange County, California. 

   I am preparing my next collection to show at art galleries in which my new techniques highlight all of my knowledge in the use of the brush and different textures denoting nature’s colorfulness. 

  “My inspiration for surrealistic or pictorial painting is derived of dreaming, both in the Alpha and Beta states that reflect Colorfulness, Harmony and the great Love for humanity and Mother Nature. Vivid dreams that embodied as sentimental and visual reality in this third dimension, the same as...to see them, they transporting me and let me keep dreaming”