Felicity O’Connor
Felicty O’Connor ‘Archaic Land’
6 February to 2 March 2025
Opening Event Saturday 8 February 2025 @3pm
Felicity O’Connor is a contemporary abstract painter whose work is inspired by the Australian landscape and the notions of discovery, uncovering, erasing and re-finding. She grew up outside of Melbourne, Australia and now lives and works on the Central Coast of NSW.
After moving to Sydney to study her masters in Art Therapy and Post Graduate in psychology, she continued to successfully practice and exhibit as a self taught artist. In 2022 she was accepted into the The New York Studio School and was awarded a scholarship by the school to attend a summer school, 2023 in New York City.
Felicity has been a finalist in a number of significant Australian art prizes including the Muswellbrook, the Waverley art prize, the KAAF, the Gosford Art prize, the Hunters Hill Art Prize and the Blacktown Art Prize.
Artist Statement
Felicity’s images arise from an engagement with the external starting point of the landscape and arrive at something that is both non representational yet simultaneously tied to a sense of place.
While the focus of her work is often based on the landscape, her process is often exploring the tensions between improvisation and composition.
The efforts to let go of control while consciously composing a painting often results in the harmonious and awkward nature of the work.
Her work shows layers of paint being created on a surface through covering, erasing, revealing, and rediscovering, creating an image which is not just referencing the internal or external but another, third kind of landscape on the very surface in front of the viewer.
“After returning from the rigours of The New York Studio School, followed by a further intensive few weeks studying in Italy, I had an intense need to re-establish my own language and return to what had always been important to me, the Australian landscape. Now the question was, how was the exposure to great masters, the huge amount of art history I’d learnt and the impact of being in New York City and Italy going to influence my own work?
On returning to the studio, initially it was uncertainty, self doubt and confusion. But slowly through a great deal of determination, the landscape and the mark making that was meaningful to me was re-emerging. Now more informed and considered, I steadily pursued painting after painting, building this body of work. Not with any destination in mind but because there was no other way to integrate the journey I’d had.
When late last year the opportunity came to return to the Australian desert with a group of artists, I jumped at it. There is a very special landscape around Fowlers Gap, 110 km north of Broken Hill which is well known to many artists. The sense of freedom and the space helped me
believe in what I was doing. There is a gentleness in the desert, so much life seems to flourish in so little. Nothing is there and yet paradoxically, everything is there.
‘Archaic Land’ brings together paintings that I hope feel alive and honest and true to the beautiful ancient landscape that exists here.”