The Stillness Within
Fiona O’Byrne is an Australian artist who paints delicate still lives and portraits, using her immediate domestic environment to create vignettes of quiet simplicity and classical harmony. Employing mainly traditional methods of oil on canvas overlaid on panelboard, the artist creates rich tonal paintings that are marked by sparse, carefully arranged compositions.
Her subject matter focuses on interiors and her familial life – vases with freshly picked flowers from her local neighborhood, portraits of her family and friends. There is a quiet intimacy in this domestic realism; she distils the essence of commonplace objects and highlights their beauty and poignancy. Her artworks could be seen as meditations on our daily life; a humble celebration of the ordinary.
Based in Melbourne, the artist grew up in regional Victoria, moving to the city to study Landscape Architecture at Melbourne University. Working as a Landscape Architect, as well as raising two children, she didn’t arrive to painting until her mid-thirties. Between 2014 and 2019 she studied under the portrait artist Lee Machelak, honing her technical skills in painting.
Fiona has always been drawn to nature and often walks the streets of her home in inner Melbourne, observing plants and flowers that have come into bloom - wattle, eucalypts and other natives - which she later uses as the subject of her still life paintings.
The artist comments that: “I like to evoke a world of simplicity and harmony, to make people feel calm and appreciate the beauty in the everyday. It is possible for me to paint the same pot or bowl for the third or fourth time. What matters is not so much the variety of the subjects but the intensity with which something is experienced, how it is perceived visually."
Refreshingly modest and contemplative, Fiona O’Byrne’s artworks offer the viewer a reflective experience, an opportunity to slow down from our busy lives and let our eyes rest and calmly observe. In a social media whirl of Instagram and Tik Tok, where images constantly shout ‘look at me’, her paintings gently draw you in and teach you how to look closely and quietly with your heart and mind.
Words by Victoria Hynes
Exhibitions & Awards
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021, 2022, AK Bellinger Gallery, Inverell
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023 Project Solstice
Westgarth Gallery, Northcote, Victoria
2019 Nature Rendered Permanent
Ladder Art Space, Kew, Victoria
2020, 2018, 2016 A.M.E Bale Art Prize
Glen Eira City Council Gallery, Glen Eira, Victoria
AWARDS
2022, 2020, Semi-finalist, The Lester Prize
2020, Semi-finalist, The Shirley Hannon National Portrait Award
2020, 2018, 2016, Semi-finalist, AME Bale Art Prize in the Medium of Oils and/or Acrylics
2017 Semi-finalist, Doug Moran National Portrait Prize
2015 Recipient of Norma Bull Portraiture Scholarship ($5,000)