Lee Maelzer: Invisible Stoic

About

Lee Maelzer's new body of work whilst rooted in urbanity outwardly manifests itself in visions of nature. Maelzer's paintings have derived from a need to connect to the directness of living in the contemporary landscape in which diversity is under threat and becoming a thing of the past. Through evolution what is here and present in our world is the fittest, the strongest and the most resilient. If natural beauty abounds then it is a by-product which is functional and subservient to survival. Maelzer's trees are both majestic and complex. She takes them apart as pure matter, then reconstructs them as pure paint. Her trees are imbued with personalities, moody, mournful and brutish. Their colour is not closely related to the real tree, but rather a theatrical and filmic re-invention of it. The natural world given the glamour of artifice is isolated then displayed as an archive. The beauty and elegance of Maelzers paintings underlie a mute landscape and an imperiled world.