Fiona Roberts’s deeply saturated yet aqueous paintings feature quiet studies of figures and have a dream like sensibility. Layers of colour and shadow drift, and overlap creating an atmospheric sfumato. The accidental quality of the materials she uses, ink and water or thinned oil or acrylic allow an intimacy and abstraction to emerge in each unique picture. At the centre of these ephemeral yet painterly places are images of women and girls, symbolising the liminality of the feminine experience in contemporary society.
To make these captivating images, Roberts begins with the composition, cropping and rearranging the elements, creating contrasts between the shadow and light with each figure and enigmatic space. The use of limited hues and muted colours lends an understated yet evocative gravity to each picture. The subjects are mysterious composites, inspired in part by the artist’s daughter and friends, who through the alchemic process of making are transformed in newly symbolic protagonists.
Roberts works with a variety of media and surfaces. Whether using ink on paper, oil on canvas or acrylic on panel she makes loose, imperfect paintings that are in stark contrast to the hyper-perfect images we are surrounded by today.
The ephemeral sensibility of these works is alluring yet at the core of this work is an evocation of the often marginalised and unseen experience of women and girls in contemporary society. The artist notes she is interested in the luminosity of Kaye Donachie’s painting and Marlene Dumas’ pictures of the unseen as well as the studies of ambiguity seen in the work of Francesca Woodman, particularly the suggestion of “unease, discomfort and strangeness.” It is this unsettling quality that Roberts evokes, allowing us to come to terms with the gravity of her subject matter.
As far as the ghostly environment and this feeling of disquiet, the artist notes: “The atmosphere is part of looking back to a past which has gone and cannot be changed. There is also the suggestion of vulnerability, of feelings of insubstantiality, of not being grounded or safe.” As such, the pictures suggest the experience of femininity as something liminal and invisible, too often overshadowed by societal expectations and roles that feel rigid and unbending. The comparison between old sepia photographs and Roberts has been made, and the artist finds this fitting noting an intense interest in contemporary society but to an ongoing engagement in the past, of old memories, and experience. Through this foggy lens we see memory, spectral beauty and a quiet ambiguity which the artist hopes will act as an open door for the viewer to see her own story within.
Rosa JH Berland
The artists says:
My paintings depict people, but they are not portraits in the traditional sense. They are not concerned with likeness or identity but with evoking emotional and psychological states, gestures, glances, and expressions that allude to something just beyond reach. Each figure is a conduit for feeling: mine, perhaps yours, perhaps everyone’s. These are works that aim to explore the complexities of being human, quietly inviting the viewer into a shared emotional space.
The heads are predominantly female, closely cropped and often solitary, with the occasional presence of a hand, a shoulder, a suggestion of background. They are often small, sometimes spare, but the layers of paint carry nuance. As arts writer Paul Carey-Kent observed, “heads are complicated, inside and out.” My paintings attempt to navigate that complexity through paint that is loosely and instinctively applied, concealing as much as it reveals.
I work compulsively using oils, inks, and watercolours across a range of supports including canvas, paper, aluminium and acrylic glass. The process is deeply intuitive. Meaning usually arrives during the making or afterwards. It is uncovered through the process of painting itself. In recent years, the recurrence of red-haired figures has become a quiet act of remembrance, rooted in personal grief. That realisation, too, came only in hindsight.
A defining gesture in my practice is the direct application of paint with my fingers. A deliberate act of transformation and revelation. It is a tactile negotiation with the surface, a way to connect more fully with the subject as it emerges.
For me, making the work is obsessive. The paintings have to be brought into being. It’s as simple as that.
Fiona G. Roberts
