Lezah Gant-Gildea (also known as Lezah Gildea-Marega) has been drawing and making art for as long as she can remember. It was 2007 when she enrolled in the Degree of Fine Arts at Griffith University, completing her major in oil painting by 2009 before she felt it  necessary to turn her mind to commercial pursuits, supporting her darling children through their education.

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By that time, Lezah had been accepted as a finalist in what was then known as the Churchie National Emerging Art prize (now known as “the Churchie emerging art prize”) with her entry, an acrylic painting, entitled “Endangered Beauty I”, focussing on the threat to the Great Barrier Reef arising from climate change and pollution.  This has been a concern to which Lezah has returned in her work over the years.

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Lezah’s painting, featuring Brisbane floodwaters and mud banks, was also accepted for the curatorial selection shown in the Tattersall’s Club Landscape Art Prize exhibition in 2009, one of only two years as far as Lezah is aware when the Prize was open to entries, other than by invitation.  

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Lezah has recently returned to Griffith University on a part time basis with the aim of completing the Degree of Fine Arts and hoping to then undertake honours in painting. As well as painting, Lezah has a love of drawing, particularly in charcoal and ink.

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An exhibition of Lezah’s work will be held this year at the Woolloongabba Art Gallery located in Brisbane.  That exhibition will focus through works in oil and acrylic on Lezah’s continuing concern for  health of the Great Barrier Reef and explore man’s engagement with and responsibility for, that great national treasure.  

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