Leslie B. DeMille — Les, to his friends — suffered a stroke two years ago, impacting his motor skills and mind enough to make his lifelong pursuit of portraiture difficult.

He struggled to recollect facts as he outlined the course of his life, which began in 1927 in Ontario, Canada. At the age of 5, he began drawing. He then moved on to oil painting, becoming proficient in the medium.

“When I started painting and drawing, I decided I wanted to paint and live as an artist,” he said.

In the 1960s, after years of producing art on his own, DeMille’s resolve took him, his wife, their five children and a dog to Southern California. He had no job prospects and only a $400 loan from his father-in-law.

Despite his inexperience in the medium, he took a job doing pastel portraits at Knott’s Berry Farm.

“I’d never used pastels before,” DeMille said with a smile. “I got pretty good at them.”

From Knott’s Berry Farm, he moved on to the dining room at Disneyland, where he did evening portraits of the diners — portraits that he estimated took between 15 and 20 minutes and surely numbered in the thousands.

To read the full story, see the Wednesday, March 18, edition of the Sedona Red Rock News.