BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:

For the last few years, Leigh White has led two careers — creating advertising designs on a fancy computer by day, painting rough slabs of cardboard in her apartment by night.

Now, the Chicago native has a new outlet for her creative side. White, who lives on the Westside of Costa Mesa, is the first artist featured in a new series from www.neckties.com, an online company based in Garden Grove. The brand set out last fall to create limited-edition necktie collections featuring designs by Orange County artists, and White, who has exhibited her work at venues throughout Newport-Mesa, got the first call.

“The whole idea was kind of rock ’n’ roll,” said White, the marketing and concept manager for the Santa Ana Heights advertising firm p11creative. “If Guns N’ Roses went to a fancy event where they had to wear a tie, what would they wear?”

There’s more than a little rock ’n’ roll in White’s paintings, as the artist uses bright colors, bold outlines and abstract perspective to portray a number of diverse subjects. Among the images in the Leigh White Neckwear collection are Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Jimi Hendrix’s guitar and an ancient Egyptian queen with one eye.

White paints many of her images late at night, laying acrylics on cardboard and often working on multiple pieces at once. In converting her work to neckties, she had to get creative sometimes. One of her paintings shows a bikini-clad woman with a group of men admiring her. To fill the necktie, White placed the woman at the bottom and created a huge crowd of men stretching to the top.

It was that pop-art approach that made White a perfect candidate to start the artist series, according to Shawn Marie Turi, the corporate sales director for neckties.com.

“Neckties have gotten kind of a bad rap over the years, and it’s nice to have something so vibrant and beautiful on a necktie,” she said.

The Leigh White Neckwear line comprises 12 designs with just 100 made of each; each comes individually numbered in a wooden box with a card autographed by the artist. Turi said the company, which doesn’t plan to reprint the ties, wanted to make the products a sought-after commodity.

“The idea with the artists series is that they are collectible,” she said. “It’s really about introducing something there’s not a lot of, and also to give artists a chance to expose their work without saturating the market.”

So far, Leigh White Neckwear has found at least one fan in the artist’s hometown. Betsy Klein, the co-owner of Steve Anderson Photography in Costa Mesa, purchased one of the ties in December and displays it around a foam head in the gallery.

“I took it home this weekend because my parents are coming home, and I wanted them to see it,” said Klein, who has hosted White’s art shows in the past. “But it’s always on display.”

AGE: 41

RESIDENCE: Costa Mesa

DAY JOB: Copy writer and advertising designer

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES: According to her biography, she is “afraid of clowns” and “the pastiest person in the O.C.”

WEBSITE: www.bellablanca.com

PURCHASE LEIGH WHITE NECKWEAR AT: www.neckties.com

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.