7th - 18th February 2006
Fierce and Fancy: New Figurative Oil Paintings by Frances McLean

McLean's latest series of artwork comprises large scale paintings of an expanded palette. Opulent and rich, her thick textured oils explore the realm of portraiture and figurative painting.
Fierce and Fancy opens on Tuesday 7th February from 5.30 - 7.00pm
7th - 18th February 2006
Fierce and Fancy: New Figurative Oil Paintings by Frances McLean

McLean's latest series of artwork comprises large scale paintings of an expanded palette. Opulent and rich, her thick textured oils explore the realm of portraiture and figurative painting.
Fierce and Fancy opens on Tuesday 7th February from 5.30 - 7.00pm

Francis McLean is a recent graduate from Auckland University where she majored in Art History, an area which complements and informs her paintings. Fierce and Fancy is Frances' second exhibition.

"Any single painting begins well before the first mark is made on canvas. For me, the work preparatory to a painting is manifold, involving everything from the most mechanical procedure, such as priming a canvas, to reckoning with fleeting pictorial ideas. A critical point must be reached, where various modes and actions of preparation will become the motive for painting to begin.
Each of these new works and the series in its entirety were painted over a longer period than I've tended to take for previous paintings. As such, the motive for each painting could not be typified as singular act from which the piece was brought to a relatively quicker resolution. Rather, the beginning was returned to and reflected on numerous times in the course of painting. This has had a palpable effect on how the individual paintings work as compositions. Not only are these paintings of a larger scale than earlier work the palette I have used has also been expanded. Interestingly, for me, it seems that where I had exercised certain stringencies in my use of colour on the basis of relational values established before a painting was initiated I have now allowed an investigation of colour to persist into the finished works.
This new approach, which has allowed a vital preparatory work to bear on the process of painting in a different manner, also involves my position with regard to the generic fields I'm deeply interested in. Most visible is my attraction to portraiture and figurative painting. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, an awareness of what has gone on before my own acts of painting is both stimulus and soporific. Received ideas carry their own risks, and not simply in terms of comprehension. In any case, and in this context, comprehension indicates a relationship with other works of art and generic forms that can only be established and conducted through the practice of painting. This is tantamount to saying that I do not so much as preclude risk, though one must have learned to mediate it when it has occurred and become familiar, rather I wish to provoke those risks which my painting has not yet been exposed to €”an investigative and creative procedure. Ideally, everything that will determine how a figure is on the canvas should be such a risk".

Spiral Gallery
First floor, 260 Queen Street, (above McDonalds) Auckland Central
(09) 303 3662 www.spiralgallery.co.nz
gallery@spiralgallery.co.nz