About
My earliest childhood memories are painting with sticks and leaves in the back yard and my early years were full of creativity. This love of painting and creating would eventually lead me to study at the Qld College of Art, where I majored in Printmaking. After obtaining my Bachelor of Fine Art, I found work as a Commercial Artist & Graphic Designer - a job I still do today, which has refined my skills of design, composition and colour.
As a landscape painter my paintings aim to reaffirm a sense of place for the viewer. My current work deals with not only my different perspectives on what defines beauty and power within the Australian landscape, but also speaks of our place within that landscape.
Through investigating nature, I am compelled to understand myself and reflect on my role and purpose of being and through this awareness I can concentrate on the emotional expression that nature suggests and this gives me the freedom to experiment with design, form and colour.
My role as an artist is to experience places and communicate those experiences to the viewer and within my work it is not the descriptive detail of the landscape that is important, rather the emotional experience where I interpret landscape through an exploration of spatial relationships. Abstract forms, lines and marks suggest reoccurring ideas of obstacles & barriers and my work contains an obsession with particular elements of the landscape, such as Rock faces, cliffs and boulders that capture the spirit of a place.
Artist Statement
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.
Bio
2025- Red Hill Gallery Summer Showcase Group Exhibition
2024- Red Hill Gallery Exhibitor
2024 - Redland Art Awards Finalist
2024 - Lethbridge Landscape Prize, Salon de Refusés
2024 - Stevens Street Gallery, Feature Artist
2023 - Lethbridge Landscape Prize, Salon de Refusés
2022 - “Stories of Place” Three White Rooms
2022 - Clayton Utz Finalist
2019 “Bris Vegas and Beyond” Three White Rooms
2019 - “Halcyon Days” Exhibition Graydon Gallery
2018 - “Rotary Art Spectacular” Brisbane
2017 - “Rotary Art Spectacular” Brisbane
2017 - Group Exhibitions Brisbane
2014 - “Echoes of Life” Graydon Gallery Brisbane
2013 - “Elements” Percolator Gallery Brisbane
2003 - 2013 Work Aquired by Private Collections
1990 - Work Aquired by Private Collections
1989 - Work Aquired by Wagga Wagga Regional Gallery
1989 - Teaching Part time at Queensland College Of Art
1988 - Teaching Part time at Queensland College Of Art
1988 - Group Exhibition “Queensland Women Artists” Rockhampton
1987 - Print Council of Australia Members Print Commission
1987 - Group Exhibition “New Artists for Queensland” Brisbane
1987 - Attended Queensland College Of Art, Graduated B.A. Fine Art
1986 - Group Exhibition Mornington Peninsula
1986 - Group Exhibition “W.A.I.T” Western Australia
1985 - Travelled to Europe and UK
1983 - 1986 Attended Queensland College Of Art, Graduated Diploma of Fine Art
1965 - Born Brisbane