Lee Bethel
  Lee Bethel
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Lee Bethel

" In her hand the scalpel is no longer a tool or cutting apparatus it has been elevated to a distinct fine art entity. "

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Counting the Dead watercolour and Encaustic on hand cut paper​ Each piece is the name of a woman killed by domestic violence in 2021 and
2022.

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The Past is a Curious Creature
Ripped paper on constructed paper box
@45 x 60 x 45 cm
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The Tenderness of Rain
Encaustic, oil and watercolour on rice paper on board 85 x85 cm
At this Point in Time The Egg and Dart Gallery Thirroul www.egganddartgallery.com
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At the Edge Encaustic on paper on board 85 x 85cm
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Duration Oil on paper on board
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Beyond Encaustic, ink and graphite watercolour on Board 100 x 100cms 
Finalist Now ​Shoahaven Regional GalleryContemporary Art Prize
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Shadows Hold their Breath Encaustic, oil, ink and graphite watercolour on board 100 x 100cms
Regeneration www.egganddart.com.au
A Garland of Freshly Cut Tears oil, graphite encaustic on board 85 x85cms
All overgrown by Cunning Moss Watercolour, oil encaustic on board 85 x 85 cms
A Piece Torn from the Morning Oil, encaustic on board 85 x 85 cms
Divide Light if you Dare Oil, encaustic on board 85 x 85 cms
That which beats time in all their Lives Biro, oil and encaustic on board 85 x 85cms
The wall received a Borrowed Splendour Biro, encaustic on board 45 x 45 cms
Lee Bethel’s new paintings have a worked, essential quality. She uses the grid as a lens through which we might track a complex surface. It is pulled into legibility, scoured back and redefined. It disappears and is then reapplied via stencil, playing with inversion and emergence. Bethel uses a dual method: the erosion of the surface through time, bound by the precision of vertical and horizontal lines. She buries and then reconnects with the grid, acknowledging its capacity for order but pressing and scumbling it away. This duality becomes a strategy to interpret the densities of her paintings. It is a rich complexity that we sink into as viewers.
 
The writer Rosalind Krauss regarded the grid as an identifying format of modernism. It brought order and removed the decorative. It acknowledged sequencing and therefore time, movement and the appearance of cinema. And while it might be a sign of modernity, the grid appears unexpectedly through art history. A 14th century BC Egyptian painting used it to describe the layout of the Gardens of Amun. In Renaissance Italy, Alberti used a “veil” on a window to transcribe the scene beyond. Albrecht Dürer then constructed a wooden frame with a net of black threads through which to view a painting subject. Drawings of Manhattan Island from the early 19th century overlay a proposed New York plan on the existing landform. In all instances the grid is used to organise space and to quantify it. Lee Bethel uses the device to explore the impossibilities of this desire for order.
 
The new paintings on board are a deliberate departure from Bethel’s recent seed assemblages although her materials remain fundamental: beeswax prepared in sunlight with watercolour rubbed over the wax; blue biro pen scrawls that bring a more deliberate mark of the hand. Lee Bethel has been a finalist in numerous prizes including the Sulman and the Hazelhurst Art of Paper Prize. This exhibition marks a move to painting but the sensibility that remains essentially Bethel: a restrained palette with contemplative and material-rich surfaces.

-Melody Willis

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Bell Jars from Flourish exhibition at www.egganddart.com.au

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'Sylvan' Seeds, watercolour and encaustic on hand cut paper on board 85 x 85 cms
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Images from Flourish exhibition. Works available from www.egganddart.com.au
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Floreo​ Seeds and rust on hand cut and folded paper on board 20 x 20 cms
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Paradeisos Encaustic, seeds and rust on hand cut paper on board 20 x 20 cms
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Parterre ​Encaustic and seeds on hand cut paper on board
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Bloom Encaustic, watercolour and seeds on hand cut and folded paper on board 20 x 20 cms
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'Fortresses for Trees Hazelhurst Art on Paper Hazelhurst Regional Arts Centre
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Operculum Seeds and watercolour on hand cut paper 1000 x 76cms 
Finalist Paramor Contemporary Art Price 2017
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'Gathered' Graphite and jacaranda spines on hand cut and folded paper
'Ode to Agnes' Watercolour and encaustic on cut paper 2005 56 x 40cms
'Bunyah' Watercolour and bunyah seeds on cut paper 2014
'Stem' Watercolour and seeds on cut paper 2014
'Pod' watercolour and eucalyptus pods on cut paper 2014
'Seriate' Watercolour and wattle seeds on cut paper 2014
'Spore' Watercolour on cut and folded paper with seed pod 2014
ROSA seeds and watercolour on cut paper
'Wandoo' Encaustic and seeds on Paper 45 x 25 cm
'Rhizome' Encaustic seeds and watercolour on paper
'Connate' Encaustic seeds and watercolour on paper
'Arbor" Encaustic watercolour and seeds on Board
'Grafted' Encaustic and seeds on board 30 x 30
detail 'Wattle' Watercolour and seeds on cut paper 2013
'Plane Tree Bayers Ave' Water Colour and seeds on cut paper, 76 x 54cms 2013
'Plane Tree, Bayers Ave' Water colour and seeds on cut paper. 76 x 54cms 2013
'Acacia' Watercolour and seeds on cut paper. 2014
'Wattle' Water Colour and seeds on cut paper. 76 x 54cms 2013
'Wattle' Water Colour and seeds on cut paper. 76 x 54cms 2013
'Fences Hill End' Watercolour, pencil on cut paper 54 x 76cms 2013
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