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Press release
Lesley Dumbrell’s latest body of optical abstract paintings reflect an exhilarating shift towards the organic. Based in rural Victoria, far from the intensity of her Bangkok studio, Dumbrell observes and absorbs her surroundings; the wind, the light, the change from night to day, the plants and the soil. From all of these elements Dumbrell describes their natural geometry; their order and resistance. This exhibition presents series of intense, visually rich paintings that has seen Dumbrell enjoy a career spanning four decades respected by curators and critics alike and described by MCA senior curator Rachel Kent as ‘one of Australia's leading exponents of abstraction’.
For me the starting is always color—the exactness of the shade and hue, the lightness or darkness is very important, the emotional field it creates as well as the references it has to the actual world. The color becomes a field or background for the linear structure of the painting; this structure is a way of describing an underlying structure, a randomness, a connection with the sensual.
Optical illusion is is often an element in my work created through a layer of separate patterns which come together to make an optical illusion. This is an ongoing fascination with visual language and the creation of something which is illusive, imagined, not real.
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Bio
Working in the traditionally male-dominated field of geometric abstraction, Lesley Dumbrell was recognised as a pioneer of the Australian women’s art movement of the 1970s and, in the next decade, she exhibited in New York and London with contemporaries Robert Jacks and John Firth-Smith. A major retrospective of Dumbrell’s work was mounted at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in 2000 and important shows at Heide and the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery have included her paintings. Dumbrell is well represented in significant private and public collections, notably the National Gallery of Australia and major state and regional galleries.
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