Fiona Scheibl
''Paint records the most delicate gesture and the most tense. It tells whether the painter sat or stood or crouched in front of the canvas. Paint is a cast made of the painters movements, a portrait of the painter's body and thoughts….''
(James Elkins 1999, What Painting Is).
Whatever the output I am not afraid of showing the sensual and joyful struggle that I have with paint, how as a painter I am in a relationship with paint as well as the subject. The paint always strives to be dominant demanding that it sits in thick layers and occupies the main fanfare of the image.
Movement - the dance of making marks is central to my creative process. I seldom paint or draw seated; I need to be free to feel my body weight on my feet and be 'in' the process. This act of being in, with and though the paint is at the heart of what motivates my work.
Knowing the subject and being in the space it occupies or has occupied is also at the core of my work. Being intimate with the process of change that takes place in and around the subject - the seasons / light / decay, time passing - become part of the focus of interest.
I work with flowers as companions rather than objects - most stay with me for many months, or even years decaying and changing - a metaphor for life. Still life.
I draw in the landscape while walking. I hope this energy and dynamic is seen in the flower paintings made in the intimate space of the studio- of a moment passed or about to become.
My work aims unashamedly at beauty but also the cryptic 'what if, what is' that comes from play and investigation. Some works are highly decorative some reflective and melancholic.
Whatever the output I am not afraid of showing the sensual and joyful struggle that I have with paint, how as a painter I am in a relationship with paint as well as the subject. The paint always strives to be dominant demanding that it sits in thick layers and occupies the main fanfare of the image.
I was born in East London to an Austrian father and English mother. I have lived in Ireland and France but work from my studio in Suffolk currently.
Selected Opens / Open Calls
‘Gestural Colour and Form’ Art Magnitude Fox Yard Suffolk 2024
RCA Open Royal Cumbrian Academy Conwy Wales 2024
‘The Great Sublime’ Art Magnitude Fox Yard Suffolk 2023
'Pop up Circus' the Arch Gallery London 2012
Candid Arts London 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2016
Gallery on Cork Street 2006
Courtyard Arts Hertfordshire 2005, 2006, 2008, 2014
Eastern Open Kings Lynn Norfolk 2004, 2006
Selected Group and Solo Exhibitions
2024The Old Goods Shed Suffolk Group show with Suffolk Open Studios
2024: Pond Gallery Snape Maltings Suffolk Group show with Suffolk Open Studios
2008- 2023: Church Street Galley Saffron Waldon Essex
2016: Brian Sinfield Gallery Oxon
2015: Wills Art Warehouse London
2015: Broxbourne Civic Hall Herts
2015: Solo show 'intimacy and substance' Hertford Theatre Gallery
2010-14: Art@88 Birkhamstead Herts
2014: Solo show 'paintings from a life' Courtyard Arts Hertford
2013: Group show Gallery Highwayman Risby Suffolk
2010: Solo show ‘Pushed Aside’ Church Street Gallery Essex
2010: Solo show ‘Winter Hues’ Wildwood Gallery Bury St Edmunds
2009: Solo show ‘A few references for identity’ Courtyard Gallery Hertford