Roman Śledź, a contemporary Polish folk art sculptor, was born May 12, 1948 in the village of Malinówka within the Gmina Cyców, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland.
His roots are from a small village peasant family. He completed elementary school but his education was disrupted at age 16 by the death of his father. Shortly after that he and his mother ran a farm together and simultaneously he started supporting his younger siblings. In the years 1968 to 1970 he worked as a tractor driver with a farmers' association in Cyców and additionally on construction work in Lublin. In 1968, at the age of 20, intrigued by an article he had read in the Gazeta Lubelska newspaper about sculptors from Wola Korybutowa, he made an attempt to carve his first sculpture. For his first work of art in 1969, he received a diploma from a Museum in Lublin. Since that time he has received numerous prizes and awards and interest from collectors of folk art.
The first of the collectors who established contacts with Roman Śledź was Ludwig Zimmerer, a distinguished collector of Polish folk art and a German journalist and correspondent for the West German Media in Poland.