Lesley Dumbrell facts for kids
Lesley Dumbrell, born in Melbourne, Australia, on October 14, 1941, is a famous Australian artist. She is known for her very precise abstract paintings that use geometric shapes. She was also a leader in the Australian Women's Art Movement in the 1970s. People know her as one of Melbourne's top artists who used international styles like "colour field" and "hard-edged abstraction." Her first big art show looking back at her career was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2024.
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Education and Teaching
Between 1958 and 1962, Lesley Dumbrell studied painting, printmaking, and sculpture. She went to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She earned a Diploma of Art in Painting. Later, from 1966 to 1968, she taught art at RMIT. In 1977, she was an Artist in Residence at Monash University. From 1980 to 1985, she taught painting part-time at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.
Her Artistic Style
Lesley Dumbrell has made important contributions to art in Australia and around the world. She is famous for her geometric abstraction paintings. This means her art uses shapes like squares, circles, and triangles.
She was inspired by artists like Piet Mondrian. She also read a book called Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky. In 1966, she became interested in colour field painting, which uses large areas of flat color. She also liked abstract art and optical art. Optical art creates illusions of movement or hidden images. At this time, Dumbrell started using Liquitex acrylic paint.
She works in a very careful way. She first makes detailed drawings on paper. This helps her plan the painting perfectly before she starts. For example, her large painting February (1976) took about six months to finish.
Dumbrell uses colors and lines to create optical effects. These effects often remind people of nature, like wind, fire, rain, and earth. Her paintings can seem to move. For instance, the painting Ripple (1972) shows a wavy effect. Her works Foehn (1975) and Zephyr (1975) show the movement of winds. She said these paintings were about "the movement part of wind, but also the intangibleness of it."
She once said about optical art: "It's always been there but it's never really been emphasised and then suddenly a group of artists were emphasising not just another style but a fundamental element in painting and bringing to the fore and making it the strongest part of the work. That seemed to me to be a really innovative development."
In 1986, her watercolor paintings were shown in the Colour and Transparency exhibition. This show was at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1990, she moved to Thailand. This added new visual ideas to her art. Now, she divides her time between Thailand and Victoria, Australia.
In 1986, Dumbrell was a special guest artist for the Melbourne Art Trams series. In 2019, she was asked to put her 1986 artwork onto a Melbourne tram again.
Supporting Women in Art
Lesley Dumbrell is a pioneer of the Australian Women's Art Movement from the 1970s. She has been involved in activities that support women artists for many years. Dumbrell worked with other artists like Erica McGilchrist and Kiffy Carter. They helped create networks for women artists in Melbourne.
Dumbrell also helped start the Women's Art Register in Australia. This is a very important collection that aims to record and save the artistic work of Australian women. It also helps to support and promote them.
Where Her Art Is Kept
Lesley Dumbrell's artworks are held in major art collections across Australia. These include the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her art is also in the Queensland Art Gallery, National Australia Bank, Federation University Australia, and Artbank.
Exhibitions and Shows
In 1969, the Bonython Gallery in Sydney held Dumbrell's first solo exhibition. Her art was shown alongside her husband Lenton Parr, Bryan Westwood, and Don Driver. A critic named Donald Brook described her "ambiguous abstract figures." He said their soft colors were "surprisingly agreeable."
In 2023, Dumbrell was part of the Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.
The exhibition Thrum at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2024 was the first big art museum show of Dumbrell's work. This exhibition covered her five-decade career. It showed her unique visual style and her amazing use of color, movement, and rhythm.
Dumbrell has shown her art widely in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Since 1990, she has lived and worked between Thailand and Victoria, Australia.
