Fiona Chivers is a Brisbane-based painter, best known for her abstract landscapes. Graduating from the Queensland College of Art in 1987 with a major in printmaking, Fiona Chivers’ interest in line work and bold colours have been a staple in her art since it’s conception. Today she works across a range of mediums, including oil paint, acrylic and watercolour, aiming to encapsulate the natural forms that characterise the Australian landscape and reaffirms a sense of place for the viewer.
Fiona Chivers reflects the uniquely Australian landscape through numerous lenses. She is interested in the position that ‘place’ holds within the human experience – more specifically, her paintings aim to evoke our personal memories of this nostalgic natural world. Her work also examines the natural cycles of erosion that have shaped our country over millennia, highlighting the beauty of nature’s gentle labour. Texture, form, and colour are all utilised to capture the paradoxical nature of the landscape – endlessly fluid yet eternally unmoving. By focusing on the effects of light within the landscape she conveys the cycle of nature, which is without beginning or end but constantly changing. The aim of the work is for the landscape to resonate with the human spirit and evoke an emotional response in the viewer.
Fiona Chivers’ process is deeply important to the work. She ventures into these spaces, immersing herself within them, and makes a series of sketches which she then brings into the studio. By working from these original sketches, Fiona Chivers recalls the sensations of being within these landscapes and reflects that in her work. A triangular relationship exists between the landscape, her inner experience, and the finished painting. As a result, her paintings are imbued with tension as she attempts to reproduce the original environment within the studio, drawing on her sustained relationship with the natural surrounding with fragments of recollection and glimpses of memory.
Fiona Chivers work focus on landscapes from within Queensland, particularly the Central Highlands and Western Queensland, where natural formations of tablelands, gorges, creeks, outcrops and waterholes provide a source of inspiration for her paintings that encompass both the shared human experiences of the landscape, with our associated memories of place and the natural cycles of erosion and fragility of the environment.