Essay Entelechy

Le Lievre’s seemingly abstract paintings seek to represent a psychological inner reality. Her work, existing in the space between what is seen and what is felt, has been linked to that of the famous 20th century American abstract painter Agnes Martin, not for what is painted, but rather in terms of the parallels in looking to represent a distinctive female sensibility, and a sense of the spiritual. At the same time, it is knowing of art history and outward-looking seeking an emotional response in the viewer.

Titles serve to reveal a system of classification, her ascribing of archaeological typologies according the characteristics of works. Typologies run like themes through her practice from the deep pools of oil covering the surface in ‘Tomes’, to the ‘Notes’ where dense graphite drawing obscures much of the oil underpainting, and the ‘Trays’ with their assemblages. Here, she shows her newest series ‘Catcher’ where drawn lines,  speaking to grids, nets and filters, are given equal weight the oil paint.

Across all her work, a play with existential themes of chaos and order, along with consideration of the formal qualities of painting such as composition, colour and tonal values, speak to the creative process. 

The artist wants to open the floodgates for the unconscious mind; to flow through with it, losing all trace of the petty and the daily and the necessary. Thus, the mind catcher itself is a thing in flux, rather than a static thing. It must dynamically shift in its sifting according to social constraints, to situation, to mental health, to disaster, to weather. This shifting is analogous to the way that MLL’s paint is in flux between its formal, abstract qualities and its leap into the concreteness of actual.[1]
 

Le Lievre has exhibited throughout New Zealand and in Sydney, Paris and Tokyo and her work is in private and public and collections. She has been a finalist in many art awards and her work has been written about extensively.

 
[1]  Rebeca Nash...