Lee-Ann Ormandy-Becker was born in Mbabane, Swaziland in 1962 but her parents returned to South Africa when she was two years old. She now resides in Rooiels where she works full-time in her studio.
After a year in USA as a Rotary Exchange Student, Lee-Ann registered with the Natal Technicon for a Fine Arts Diploma but didn’t complete the diploma. She did one year with UNISA. Lee-Ann had her first solo exhibition at NSA Gallery 1997 and has participated in several group exhibitions over the years. Lee-Ann had a painting selected for the Brett Kebble 2004 exhibition and was awarded a Merit Award by CSA Western Cape for her ceramics in 2019.
Lee-Ann participated in several group exhibitions in 2021 namely, CERA-MIX at Art.B Gallery; Phantasmagoria at RK Contemporary; Surface at IS ART and Summer Salon at AITY. 2022 was focused on working towards her solo show “Through the Looking Glass” which opened March 2023 at AITY Gallery, Franschhoek. This was followed by XI a group exhibition at IS Art, Stellenbosch and CERA-MIX 2024 at Art-B Gallery, Bellville.
Both clay and oil paint are part of Lee-Ann’s creative process, with her having to divide her time between the two mediums. They both reflect Lee-Ann’s need to work with texture and tactility.
When I paint, I am hugely influenced by the concepts of memory, dreams, mythology and the subconscious and I try to convey their influence on what I am inspired to paint. My aim is to create poetry through the medium of paint.
Whilst working with paint, my need to explore the visceral quality of oil paint is overwhelming. The urge to push and pull, to squeeze and squash the paint into an emotion, influences every painting that I paint.
This urge to use paint as a medium through which I can convey subconscious emotions is particularly evident where I have manipulated the paint to appear as the subconscious and hidden agendas of life, pushing up from the deep adding pressure to the surface. Scarring and explosions then emerge through the paint.
I try to express how the hidden always influences the seen.
When working with clay, I find that I slip into an unsolicited meditation that allows the subconscious to express itself through the clay. Porcelain is my favourite clay medium. Porcelain is a paradox. It is both fragile and extremely tough. I work with its fragility and vulnerability.
I am inspired and influenced by fynbos and the sea, both of which are visible from my studio. My awareness of the fragility of this environment filters through all my ceramic pieces as does the constant evolution of life and death. I am influenced by the imperfections of nature, and I find that coiling the clay seems to have a natural affinity to express this influence.
Pinching, squeezing, piercing the clay, are actions that I so enjoy using to create a vessel that rises from the deep, connecting to what is on the surface around my studio.