Belem Lett

Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2024 - Finalist

_{[Image courtesy of the artist and Edwina Corlette Gallery, Brisbane]}

Artist Statement

Lett’s work plays with light and colour as inseparably the same. The act of painting is considered through the history of gestural abstraction. Reduced to a surface and paint applied with a colour-loaded brush. There is an implicit physical momentum involved in Lett’s work; the push/pull, twists, the drag of the brush, the drip, the stop and start.  Individual works explore the surface and traditional constraints of the painting through, at times, bouncing off its edges and returning inwards to explore the interior space of the painting. While at others zooming off the edge in a manner which implies a broader, limitless world that we are only seeing a cropped section of. There is a consistent concern with movement, colour and light.  

The brushwork throughout Lett’s work traces this movement of light and colour through space. While simultaneously being representative of the artist’s body and movement. Gestured segments allow the path to be broken, implying a passing of time, while also fracturing the concise coloured segments. This allows the painting to constantly shift its propositions on colour and movement. The simple form of a line and its movement allows such a multitude of connotations and references. Through this, there is an embrace of the viewer’s interpretation. The pathways become racetracks, circuits, pipes, rainbows, cursive script or moments in time. In each iteration they all tie together to form a network of light movement.