Beguiled by Fionna Madigan

December 7 – 21 2024
Main Gallery
Opening Reception: Thursday 12th December, 6 – 8 pm
Guest Speaker: Dee Madigan
View Catalogue

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I am drawn to a fertile zone between abstraction and realism and am particularly satisfied when my paintings straddle these genres. I commence with compositional goals and encourage random occurrences; improvisation and transience are integral concepts to my creative endeavour. 

Florals are my guilty pleasure.  It feels so difficult for floral paintings not to feel derivative and I am constantly confronted, when painting, of every floral image I have ever seen. What I enjoy about florals is that the subject matter and shapes are so readily understood by the viewer and that affords me delicious latitude to  focus on the aspects of painting that enthral me the most;  the materiality, the process, abstraction, colour, mood and optical play. I can also indulge in a colour palette that is very different to that of my Central Australian Landscapes.

 My work is an abstracted response to the colour, texture and forms of the flora and landscape around me. It offers a window of aesthetic contemplation and an experience of perception. Texture works in the painting on a visceral level; we feel texture in our bodies, even if it’s being viewed and not touched. I aim for the work to be optically playful; the painting surface is mat and the work comprises richly compressed layers which tease playfully with depth perception.

https://www.fionnamadigan.com/