Bevlee Michel
Bevlee grew up in a small country town in Mpumalanga and graduated from the
University of the Witwatersrand in 1986 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours
in Painting. Alongside building her own painting practice, she ran an art school for
33 years, teaching both adults and children. In 2018, she closed the school to
focus fully on her work as a professional artist.
Her current work is rooted in the idea of the palimpsest, surfaces that hold traces of
what came before. Bevlee builds her paintings through layers of texture, working
into them with charcoal and oil paint, using both glazing and impasto techniques.
Over time, this process has led her naturally toward abstraction, where each work
grows out of earlier marks and decisions.
The idea of excavation is central to her approach. Colours, textures and gestures
interact in ways that feel both intuitive and unexpected, giving each piece a sense
of depth and history. The works unfold in unpredictable ways, shaped by an
ongoing negotiation between control and release.
At this stage in her practice, she has chosen to let go of a certain level of control,
moving away from purely technical concerns to paint more instinctively. This shift
has opened up a more expressive way of working, one that feels both challenging
and energising, and continues to push the work in new directions.
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