Fiona is a mixed media artist living in Derbyshire. Being on the edge of the beautiful peak district, she is often photographing the countryside for inspirational material.

She is drawn to creating layered painted surfaces, like patchworks, where materials press together in beautiful textures and patterns. Using plants and flowers as source material gives her a huge variety of shapes, colours and textures to work with. For her reference photos she takes low angle and shallow depth images of inspiring plant combinations, which give an immersive perspective, with curated focal points. This allows her to recreate how the eye focuses.

She begins her artworks by preparing paper with an initial expressive, almost chaotic application of colour and mark-making, allowing the inherent nature of the inks and watercolour to control the result.  From there she begins introducing the source material in layers; starting with fluid, almost dreamy, out of focus background shapes which frame, accentuate or disappear into the under marks and splashes. The final layer is painted in a thicker gouache application to give a solid feel to the main forms; these are also depicted more realistically with greatest detail and sharpest silhouettes.

Fiona’s current works are mixed media paintings of organic forms, where elements have been reproduced with different levels of realism and abstraction, to recreate how we experience complex visual landscapes.