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 Lowryโs ‘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 Lowryโs work is taken from Walt Whitmanโs poem Gliding Oโer 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 Opheliaโs 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.
โGliding 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 Governmentโs Cultural Gifts Program by Alex Orellana, 2018 ยฉ the artist
