LEE-ANN HEATH

(b. 1975 Durban, South Africa)

Her lush botanical paintings stem from Lee-Ann Heath’s love for impasto oil paint, nature and connection. Using her surroundings as a point of departure, Heath draws on inspiration both natural and relational. Lee-Ann Heath’s desire is to recreate, analyse and deconstruct sensation.

When working with such thick paint, the challenge of finding the right balance between confident brush and palette knife strokes and moments of vulnerability becomes integral to Heath’s process, with the continuous rearrangements of colours and forms lifting and enhancing each other, layer upon layer. The work reflects an obsessive urge to find the right combination of colour, line and shape. As Heath explains: “I find the elements of surprise and unexpected accidental moments exciting, and when the accidental meets the intentional it often leads to the identity of the work coming unto its own.”

The canvas has the noticeable touch of her hand, where the thickly layered paint has been moved around in a sensuous manner by her palms or fingers. This technique gives the images a three dimensional, nearly culinary quality, the paint with an appearance like icing on a cake… almost good enough to eat. This invitation to an intense sensory interaction is carried through all the pieces, making the artwork massively tactile and dynamic.

EXHIBITIONS

2023 What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2022 Things I’d like to remember, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

        Seduction, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2021 Spring show, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa 

        Tele-Pollination, solo, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2020 Delicious Deliverance, solo, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

        IMAGO, group show, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa
        A Subtle Skill, group show, Knysna Fine Arts, Knysna, South Africa
        On Being, group show, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

        STILL, online group exhibition, Everard Read, South Africa & UK

2019 Re-Arrangements, solo, part of Cubicle Series, Everard Read, Cape Town

2018 Summer, group exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

        See.Me finalist for the Time Square Exhibition, New York, USA

2016 Solo exhibition at Art.Space, Cape Town, South Africa

2008 Solo exhibition VEO Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2001 Wembley Rd Studio, group exhibition, Cape Town, South Africa