fiona mCintyre

My work is inspired by the rural location of the Cotswolds in which I work and live, the history of this landscape with it's undulating hills, etched fields, tangled copses and ancient woodlands. But it is during years spent in the West Highlands of Scotland and Scandinavia that a fascination was first sparked within me of the idea of 'wilderness'. My painting took on a deeply emotional spontaneity which evolved in Sweden under the tutelage of surrealist Bertil Lundberg, and because of an inspirational meeting with Icelandic abstractionist Svavar Guđnason. Although English landscape is more pastoral than wild I am still attracted to the idea of the power of natural forces diminishing the significance of man and that nature being somewhat greater than us can still surprise and astonish in its power and beauty.

The painting 'New Fallen' is a Cotswold pastoral idyll of snow new fallen within a woodland clearing. Our gaze is caught by a central clump of trees and a graceful dialogue draws us in, past the eucalyptus to the evergreen in the field. It is the distillation of many hours drawing outdoors and the retaining of an emotional memory of a cold, crisp, cloudless afternoon where the light gave the trees an elegant clarity against the perfect blanket of snow and my fingers began to tingle.

I find that total immersion in the landscape is crucial to the integrity of my work because I am able to observe and experience the impermanence of nature first hand. Back in the studio the combined experience of this direct involvement with nature is distilled, reorganised and simplified into rhythmical patterns which romanticise the grace and skeletal structure of winter trees.

The chromatic colour and simplified form is reminiscent of artists of the 1930's, although the traces of man are only alluded to in the agricultural tracks in the field as we focus on the natural rhythms echoed in sky, land and woodland. 'New Fallen' presents a doorway into the perfection of life as we would wish it to be through it's compositional structure, it's heightened use of colour, improvised gesture and fluid approach. The viewer is invited to meditate on tranquility and what lies beyond the visible.

Fiona drawing - Tioram Castle

New Fallen - oil on linen.
Part of the curated exhibition 'Under the Greenwood; Picturing the British Tree' St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery 12th Oct - 23rd Nov 2013

CURRENT:

In the wake of the St Barbe exhibition I have spent the last few months focusing on the theme of trees and the practice of drawing which are forming the foundations for a series of paintings in oil. Drawing is fundamental to my practice as an artist and forms the backbone to all my work. I spend many hours outdoors responding directly to my subject often using charcoal and graphite which I find to be both incisive and intuitive. Observational and subjective is how I would describe my drawings which are very much a fusion of control, traditional skills and expressionism. This leads on later to painting which always happens in the studio and becomes an attempt to condense my reference material and extract an essence. Trees are currently forming my biggest theme and the more I explore them the more I become fascinated and drawn in to their power, their ancient history, mythology and biology. I am reading around the subject and constantly discovering extraordinary facts about how crucial trees are to the well being of our planet!

I sit close to the trees so that I can feel and smell them and by doing this I start noticing their organic, twisting structures, the texture of bark and lichens and the almost human - like limbs of branches. All this I put into my drawings and then add another dimension in the paintings which are about colour and rhythms.

Another theme has been the recent floods and water-logging of the landscape around me in Gloucestershire. I live in a small village with a river and a brook both running through my garden and during the heavy, relentless rain they break their banks and join together in a lake that submerges most of the garden. I have become fascinated by water-logged fields, frozen fields and snow-clad fields which transform the land in unexpected ways adding another dimension that transforms the ordinary. The painting 'Reflection in Flooded Field, Yanworth' was bought by a collector in Alaska who recognised something in the painting that was reminiscent in that part of the world where water and land are intertwined.

CURRICULUM VITAE

"True to her Scottish origins, the energetic and gestural painter Fiona McIntyre is a colourist, extolling the virtues of painterly spontaneity to capture often elusive effects of multivarious landscapes in flux. Within the environments that have moved her, she complements observation with improvisation and interpretation. Using decisive sweeps of paint or charcoal her works have the earthy gravitas of the (early) Van Gogh - inspired Cumbrian painter Sheila Fell while also, in terms of her strong palette, evoking the chromatic romanticism of Innes and John....This artist’s uncanny mix of cerebral and sensual qualities corresponds with a plethora of influences ranging from immediate family background - McIntyre’s great grandfather was the celebrated Camden Town painter Malcolm Drummond on whom she has lectured with eloquence and insight"

Peter Davies - writer and art critic

EDUCATION

1992-93 MA (European Fine Art) - Winchester School of Art in Barcelona.
1989-92 Printmaking at Grafikskolan Forum, Sweden under Bertil Lundberg.
1982-85 BA (hons) Painting & Drawing - Edinburgh College of Art.
1981-82 West Surrey College of Art and Design (Distinction).

EXHIBITION HISTORY

CURATED EXHIBITIONS

2013 St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery - Under the Greenwood: Picturing the British Tree.
2013 Corinium Museum, Cirencester - Hidden Treasures.

2002/12 SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2012 The Montpellier Gallery - 'Painting the Land and Sea'.
2002 8 Reece Mews, Kensington.

TWO/THREE PERSON EXHIBITIONS

2013 Wet Paint Gallery, Cirencester - with Sophie Ryder and Don Cordery.
2011 Quest Gallery, Bath - 'Celtic Roots' with Wendy Dison
2010 D'Arcy Gallery - 'Coastal' with Ian Shearman
2003 The Rope Store Gallery, Nailsworth - with Terry Cripps
1988 Lund University, Sweden - with Krystina Piotrowska

2012 GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Sept 6th - 28th Bath Contemporary - Kingdom and County
Oct 4th - 29th Bath Scientific & Literary Institute - BSA
2012 Moncrieff-Bray Gallery, Sussex.
2011 Resipole Studios, Acharacle, Argyll.
2011 The Montpellier Gallery, Cheltenham
2010 Jonathan Poole, Gloucestershire.
2010 Thompsons Gallery, Marlybone, London.
2010 Summerfield Gallery, Cheltenham
2007 The Swell Gallery, Gloucestershire.
2007 Bowlish Contemporary, Shepton Mallet.
2007/8/9 Carina Haslam Fine Art. AAF, Battersea.
2006/9 Out Of The Blue Gallery, Bath.
2006 - 10 The D'Arcy Gallery, Cheltenham.
2002 - 12 Victoria Art Gallery, Bath.
2005 The Lennox Gallery, Chelsea, London.
2005 Gallery 22, Ashburton, Devon.
2004 The Great Barn, Higher Ashton, Devon.
2004 Christies, St James, London - 'Art for Life'.
2003 The Hotbath Gallery, Bath.
2002 The Royal West of England Academy.
2002 Camden Fine Art, Bath. Contemporary art with the Camden Town Group.
1999 Arts Haven, Exeter.
1997 Lund Art Museum, Sweden. Retrospective Printmakers.
1996 The Mall Galleries, London. Discerning Eye.
1995 Konstfrämjande, Malmö, Sweden.
1994 Delfina Studio Trust, Bermondsey, London.
1994 The Coventry Gallery, London. 'Festival of Women's Art'.
1993 Le Chat Noir, Albemarle Street, London.
1993 Studio 9, London. Winchester Post Graduates.
1993 Winchester School of Art.
1993 British Council, Barcelona.
1992 Gallery F15, Moss, Norway.
1991 Forum Galleriet (Malmö Roseum), Sweden.
1990 Gallery Konstnärscentrum, Malmö, Sweden.
1988 Gallery Bengt Adlers, Malmo and Lund Museum - 'From the Corners of my Eye'. Art performance.
1987 Bohuslän Art Museum, Sweden - Laderfabriken.
1985 The Stockbridge Gallery, Edinburgh.
1984 The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.

ARTWORK IN PUBLIC SPACES

Malmö Allmänna Sjukhus - Mural and relief installed in Department for Information 1988.
(Winning entry of public competition to build artworks for Malmo General Hospital).
REPRESENTED
Bohuslän Art Museum, Sweden.
Fjarhitin Consulting Engineers, Reykjavik, Iceland.
Also in private collections in Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Germany, Britain, Israel and America.

PRIZES

Prosigns Graphics.
Bath Printmakers.
Surrey Heath Council Arts Bursary.
Surrey Young Artist of the Year.

MEMBERSHIPS

Bath Society of Artists - elected in 2002.
Delfina Studio Trust, Bermondsey, London - elected by portfolio in 1994.
The Block Printmakers, London - elected 1994.
Malmö Kollectiv Verkstad - elected 1989.
Läderfabriken Konstkollectiv, Malmö - elected 1987.

PUBLIC TALKS

St Barbe Gallery and Art Museum, Lymington.
Bath Society of Artists.
The Montpellier Gallery, Cheltenham.
The Quest Gallery, Bath.
Cotswold Art Club.
Cirencester Art Society.
Cardiff Society of Artists.
Central School of Speech and Drama, London.
Westminster School of Adult Education.

TEACHING

New Brewery Arts, Cirencester.
Farnborough College.
Central School of Speech and Drama, London.
South Thames College of Art and Design.
Westminster School of Adult Education.
Medborgar Skolan, Lund, Sweden.

PUBLICATIONS

New British Art by Jacob Sutton.
A History of the Bath Society of Artists by Peter Davies, St Ives Publishing.
Under the Greenwood: Picturing British Trees From Constable to Kurt Jackson. Written by Ann Anderson and Ian Massey, published by Sansom and Company.

PRESS

Cheltenham Radio - 2013. Interview with Fiona McIntyre at the launch of solo exhibition 'Painting the Land and Sea' at The Montpellier Gallery.
Gloucestershire Echo - 2007. 'Artist's take inspiration from land'.
Somerset Life - 2004. Arts and Antiques.
Bath Chronicle - 2003. Bath Society of Artists at the Hotbath Gallery as part of Bath Art Festival.
Somerset Life - 2003. A day in the life - Fiona's Passion for Art.
Bath Chronicle - 2002. Life and Soul - City Launches itself onto the Catwalk.
Bath Chronicle - 2002. Art Attack.
Bath Chronicle - 2002. Life and Soul - Inspired by Sense of Place.
The Bath Chronicle - 2002. Make quality design an absolute priority.
Swedish National Radio - 1989. Art performance 'From the Corners of my Eye' by Bengt Adlers.
Sydsvenskan 1988. Kvinnan och Ensamheten - exhibition at Lund University, Sweden.
Sydsvenska Dagbladet 1988. Om Bilden i Sig - exhibition at Lund University, Sweden.

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