‘I thought, I’ll show you guys’: eye-popping artist Lesley Dumbrell finally gets her due at 82

‘She’s never been fearful or asked for permission’ … Lesley Dumbrell with her 1974 artwork Solstice. Photograph: Jenni Carter/AGNSW

As a young art student at Melbourne’s RMIT at the end of the 1950s, Lesley Dumbrell was among a cohort of mostly women, contemplating a profession that was dominated by men. Even so, she was shocked when the head of the painting department blithely told her that he was happy to have women in his class “because no doubt they’ll get married, and if they marry well they will become very good collectors of art”.

“That was enough to get me going,” she recalls. “I thought: right, I’ll show you guys.”