Fiona Lowry

Fiona Lowry

For our second work to be presented in the evolving online exhibition On Stillness with Newcastle Art Gallery, we have chosen NAS alumna Fiona Lowryโ€™s ‘Gliding over all’. Lowry is known for her sensual and dreamy renderings of people and place, and for her contemporary approach to life-sized figure painting.

The title of Lowryโ€™s work is taken from Walt Whitmanโ€™s poem Gliding Oโ€™er All, from Leaves of Grassย (1855). A naked figure is either floating or falling in water or space. Lowry references the Pre-Raphaelite figure of Ophelia but instead of placing her horizontally, she subverts Opheliaโ€™s sense of repose by placing her on a vertical axis, thus creating a sense of an awakening. We are also reminded of Christ on the cross โ€“ with arms held up and with a body hanging stiff and straight with closed eyes. This has a disquieting effect โ€“ the painting is full of vulnerability, suspense, gothic haze and romance.

โ€˜Gliding o’er all, through all, through Nature, Time, and Spaceโ€™. The figure is perfectly still, she rests in silence, suspended in a brief moment of time.

Image: Fiona Lowry, Gliding over all, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 183 x 123 cm, National Art School Collection, donated through the Australian Governmentโ€™s Cultural Gifts Program by Alex Orellana, 2018 ยฉ the artist

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