2010
This way up: an exhibition of recent abstract painting
Artist statement
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My paintings are abstract in the sense they are not pictures of visual things/objects that we can name. They are explorations of paint materials, applications of paint, compositions, colour combinations, surface, space, tones. I enjoy the combinations of glossy surfaces next to matte, textured next to flat, a large block of dull colour next to a glimpse of a highly saturated colour. I work in an improvisational manner through the building up of many layers. I enjoy focusing on elements such as the quality of edges — hard edges created through using tape, edges with seepage under the tape, peeling edges.
Ideas that interest me most are to do with paintings about painting or the history of abstract painting, yet at some point I stopped thinking so obviously about history and re-hashing the past in a new way.
I am interested in process and decision-making and how we see and feel. I am often analyzing my working processes and working out ways to challenge them. In new paintings I often take elements from old paintings and explore them in new ways. I build up paintings over a period of weeks, usually working on one painting exclusively. Through doing this I think a painting will often encompass a feeling from that period of my life. Sometimes I want to create the same mood in my paintings as the music I am listening to. Generally I don't like my paintings to be too upbeat or too dark, just somewhere in between.
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2008
BLAZE 08
Catalogue essay by Yolande Norris
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The subjects of Fiona Little's bold yet elegant paintings are the structure of the picture field, the materiality of the surface and paint, and the very construct of painting itself.
Colour plays an important role in these works, but not in the sense that one might typically associate with painting. Little rarely mixes her own colours, instead using paint 'straight out of the tube' and in this manner considers the colours to be found objects. She is interested in the process of paint manufacture and searching out new paints and pigments with which to work. Using readymade colours effectively limits the painting's palette and allows Little to introduce boundaries from which to approach the work as a whole.
Little works from the outside in, beginning at the canvas edge. Edges and convergent shapes are a favourite feature within these works, and sections of the painting are masked off to create new moments where these structural elements may occur.
Layers of paint are built up until next to nothing of the original ground remains visible. Subsequently, large areas of colour are reduced to vibrative flashes that peek from beneath the shapes that have obscured them. This use of layering creates a play between flatness and depth which is furthered by Little's use multiple types of paint and methods of application within one work.
Little pairs dense, reflective shapes alongside translucent colours that veil the many layers lying beneath, leaving just enough visible to trap the viewer's eye within her rigid, yet somehow amorphous compositions.
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