Courtesy: the artist and James Makin Gallery, Melbourne.

Meadow was chosen as the title for Belem Lett’s forthcoming solo exhibition prior to the work being made. This was a first for the artist, for whom the exhibition title had previously emerged through either the painting process, or in a final clarifying moment. Lett’s shift in his exhibition process was centred upon his continued exploration of colour as a direct interaction/depiction of the fracturing of white light from the sun, into the visible spectrum. A meadow, as a contextual space, resonated with Lett as a cleared space, an expansive stage of sorts that can be populated with flickering light, dappled, distinct or shimmering, refracted or subdued by atmospheric conditions.

This stage allows for the eye to move with these shifting palettes. The meadow is a place where we have enough space to view multiple facets of the natural world – be it distant mountains, forest groves, individual components such as a single flower, or larger concepts such as the life-giving sun overhead, literally colouring the world we live in. For Lett this vantage point of light, movement and perspective echoed a thought experiment by Albert Einstein, which gifted the theoretical premise of what it would look like to travel along a beam of light. This concept stayed with the artist as he dragged pigment across the open, physical plane of the painting, the material properties of each colour and pigment laid clearly together in unique combinations.

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