This August we are delighted to welcome back Australian artist, Fiona Barrett-Clark who in her practice continues to draw from the mesmerising Australian landscape, capturing the infinite mood of the vaporous sky dome that looms over our suburban world.

Fiona’s works are an attempt to evoke the magnificence of the cosmic ocean above, that most of us take for granted every single day. The beauty of an uncomplicated, unpretentious, Australian skyscape with its medley of celestial colours, cloud patterns and the metamorphous effect it has on everything in our world.

“‘Last Light’ explores the shapes and shadows of suburbia as the last melancholy moments of the day leave the sky and make way for the night.

The details fall away, creating the black silhouette of trees, telegraph poles and houses, which help amplify the intensity of the sky. The last rays of sunlight catch the clouds and produce an unpredictable array of colours in the sky, never the same one day to the next. 

This is the most beautiful time of the day, magic hour, where most of us forget to take in and immerse.” 

– Fiona Barrett-Clark

Fiona lives in the suburbs of Sydney where, though only 30 minutes from the CBD, her home is surrounded by bushland, the best of both worlds.  A contemporary landscape painter, her works are slightly pared back, uncomplicated and imbued with an eeriness that is distinctively Australian. With a focus on the sky and the mood it creates on the land, there is an attempt to awaken people to the magnificence of nature, and the cosmic soup beyond our perspective of the sky that often goes unthought of, unseen and unnoticed.

Fiona has been influenced by such Australian painters as Jeffery Smart, Clarice Beckett, Arthur Streeton. Fiona graduated from The Sydney Gallery School in 1998, majoring in painting and since then has had 9 solo exhibitions. This is Fiona’s fourth solo exhibition at Saint Cloche, where she is represented and has been exhibiting since 2019.

Fiona is based in Sydney and has been exhibiting for over two decades. She was a finalist in the 2019 Hawkesbury Art Prize, featured in publications including the Sydney Morning Herald, House and Garden and is featured in ‘A Painted Landscape’ by Amber Creswell Bell, published by Thames & Hudson.