Lesley Dumbrell

Born in 1941 Melbourne artist Lesley Dumbrell has been working with a type of grid. Linear works with colour gradients.

The 1975 painting below is part of a series of six optical colour paintings named after various winds. Something that comes and goes. No actual physical substance yet can be felt and seen. Wonder if the work can still be seen as part of the National Australia Bank collection?

| Lesley Dumbrell, Chinook, 1975 |

A more recent work from 2010 was part of a lovely exhibition. Dumbrell is still thinking about wind, light, night to day, plants and soil. All the elements and colour.

Here is is what Lesley had to say “For me the starting is always colour—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 colour 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 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.”

That word illusion again.

| Lesley Dumbrell, Cimmerian, 2010 |

Julia Ritson