Her lush botanical paintings stem from Lee-Ann Heath’s (b. 1975 Durban, South Africa) love for impasto oil paint, nature and connection. Using her surroundings as a point of departure, Heath draws on inspiration both natural and relational with the desire 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 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.

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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 Heath’s artworks massively tactile and dynamic.