Brought up in North Cornwall, Ley studied at Falmouth School of Art and Kingston Polytechnic.
After 10 years of working within the design and fashion business in London she moved back to Cornwall in 1996 to raise her young family.
Here Ley was able to move her work into illustration and to concentrate on more personal projects and away from the commercial aspects of design. Although still working as a designer for more local and ethical companies she spent the majority of her time illustrating childrens books.
Ley became increasingly absorbed in printmaking, mainly etching, regularly exhibiting at the Limekiln Gallery in Calstock, which, along with her husband, she established in 2006.

Ley uses established time-worn methods and materials, pen and ink and traditional printmaking techniques, predominantly intaglio. Her work is closely observed in the main, the intent being to capture the offbeat and unobvious. It’s mostly about light, and the way it can change the atmosphere, embrace and enhance a subject, or just fleetingly bestow a place or an object with a gilded majesty, sending the senses soaring and leaving the imagination questioning. Inspiring the viewer to observe the world more carefully and to discover beauty in unusual places, particularly the everyday and commonplace, is her aim.

In this recent series of work Ley has used soft ground etching, sugar lift and aquatint to achieve these highly contrasting still lifes. Although the objects themselves require much investigation the images are as much about the space that they do not occupy, the rich deep black velvetyness of the aquatint and the gentle tonal areas have been developed to convey an atmosphere of both calm and intrigue.

Roberts' work can be found in many private and public collections. Her etchings appears regularly at the RWA Bristol Open as well as in Bath and galleries in the Southwest. She was a finalist in this year's Fen Ditton Contemporary Print Prize.
Her work, made in response to the Mayflower 400 commemorations has recently been added to the permanent collections of Cape Cod Museum of Modern Art (USA) and Torre Abbey (UK)