Irises The Gathering

A garden becomes a gathering place for strange and spirited beings. Flowers, seedpods and leaves shift into faces, birds, mouths and hybrid creatures, each appearing to carry its own personality. They crowd together beneath an open turquoise sky, creating a scene that feels theatrical, communal and slightly unruly.

Warm reds, rusts and oranges give the painting an earthy intensity, while bold dark outlines hold its constantly changing forms together. Playful and unsettling at once, Irises: The Gathering invites the viewer to discover new characters and relationships with every encounter.

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Leon Fernandes is a richly expressive painter with a deep interest in psychological and spiritual themes. From his longstanding series of hilly landscapes to his more recent embroideries, he is always challenging preconceptions about subject matter, colour, and media. A queer artist with an atypical mind, his work has extraordinary emotional range; he investigates the world with a combination of brutal honesty, intellectual curiosity, and pure joy. Leon draws strongly on his mixed European and South Asian heritage, repurposing Catholic and Hindu iconography and fearlessly hybridising the sacred and the profane. His depiction of Krishna smoking meth outside the Imperial Hotel (Krishna in Erskineville, 2017) provoked a heated public conversation about the role of art and artists in Australian culture. Leon’s approach to canvas is just as unrestrained, using oils, acrylic, spray paint, machine embroidery, and found fabrics to produce richly textured and layered works.

He lives in Newtown, Sydney, Australia.