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Details
- Date
- 1974
- Media category
- Watercolour
- Materials used
- pencil, Liquitex on white paper on card
- Dimensions
- 43.2 x 73.8 cm (image); 52.0 x 76.2 cm (sheet)
- Signature & date
Signed, dated l.r., pencil 'L. Dumbrell 74'
- Credit
- Gift of Lesley Dumbrell 2022
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 120.2022
- Copyright
- © Lesley Dumbrell
- Artist information
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Lesley Dumbrell
Works in the collection
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About
Trained in Melbourne between 1959-62, Dumbrell’s early response to international abstraction, sparked by her encounter with op art in the 1960s, led her to form a distinct personal language of painting based on non-representational form. Abstraction became foundational to her practice and has remained the driving force in her art over the subsequent six decades.
Dumbrell’s career was shaped by the rise of the women's art movement in Australia - she was a co-founder of the Women’s Art Register, a member of the Lip collective and participated in exhibitions that asserted the rightful place of women artists within the art world. Her uncompromising commitment to her own practice - which stood in contrast to many of her female peers in terms of style - stands as a testament to her individuality, while also reflecting her embrace of ‘female’ decorative aesthetics within the forms of abstract painting.
While predominantly a painter, Dumbrell is also keenly committed to drawing, and lately, to sculpture. Inextricably linked, her work in all mediums coalesce in a harmonious oeuvre linked by colour and geometry, rhythm and light.
Study for ‘Solstice’ is a preparatory study for Solstice (1974), a painting in the Gallery’s collection. Drawings are always part of Dumbrell’s process, as are more realised colour works on paper. Solstice comes from a series of ‘Optical paintings’ made after the artist’s discovery of Op-art painters, particularly Bridget Riley, which proved seminal to her abstract practice. Painted in 1974, it comprises vertical blue lines overlaid with a repeated pattern of orange, pink, and green triangles, which combine to give an impression of movement and produces a hypnotic effect. -
Exhibition history
Shown in 2 exhibitions
Lesley Dumbrell: paintings and studies, Abraxas Gallery, , 16 Mar 1976–04 Apr 1976
Lesley Dumbrell: paintings & studies 1967-1977, Monash University, Australia, 12 Oct 1977–04 Nov 1977
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Bibliography
Referenced in 1 publication
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Patrick McCaughey and Grazia Gunn, Lesley Dumbrell: paintings & studies 1967-1977, 'Checklist, Studies', Melbourne, 1977. no.S13 No page numbers
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