Rae, Fiona
Fiona Rae's painting quotes from a wide range of visual sources. The unlikely combination of images not only includes references to artists such as Miro, Franz Kline and Gerhard Richter but also incorporates snatches of silhouettes of Disney characters and snippets of popular imagery such as mail order catalogues and comic strips. Her colours come from equally unlikely sources; the pale green here is familiar from institutions such as hospitals. In a single canvas, Rae can work her way through all sorts of possibilities in paintings; expressive brushwork, intimately drawn lines, hard edge. She writes: 'I more or less invent the paintings directly onto the canvas. Improvisation is an important element but my attitude is not that of an abstract painter. I don't think my paintings are 'universal' or 'pure' or anything like that - they're kind of phoney abstract - but I do always work on them upside-down, back-to-front and all that and I do end up with something I couldn't have envisaged or invented beforehand.'
Untitled (pale green I)
1990