Fiona Rae was born in 1963 in Hong Kong. She graduated from Goldsmiths College of Art and soon afterwards featured in the seminal 1988 warehouse exhibition 'Freeze'. In 1991 she was short listed for the Turner Prize. She has shown widely in the UK, Europe and the USA. She was included in Sensation at the Royal Academy in 1997; and in 2001 she showed in Hybrids' at Tate Liverpool. She is represented in Walker Art Gallery's collection. Her paintings are characteristically colourful and visually dynamic syntheses of disparate formal elements and gestures.

Fiona was one of the artists in the seminal Freeze exhibition curated by Damien Hirst in 1988. Her work was subsequently bought by Charles Saatchi and shown in the major 1997 Sensation exhibition, which brought Britart into the establishment, as it was hosted by the Royal Academy, London, before touring abroad. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1991, and in 1993 for the Austrian Eliette Von Karajan Prize for Young Painters. She was commissioned by Tate Modern to create a 10 metre triptych Shadowland for the restaurant there in 2002.

Rae is now a Royal Academician and also a trustee of the Tate Gallery, both significant accolades for the artist.

Her work is abstract, and makes a Postmodern use of a seemingly random assemblage of painterly applications in order to create new and unexpected juxtapositions on the canvas. It is a cool and much more cerebral version of Abstract Expressionism.

Hong Kong Garden is a beautiful show of large canvases covered in symbols, floral patterns, 70's psychedelic letters, digitised numbers, splattered paint and loose blurs of colour. Her abstract future-classical works look like Miro meeting Murakami in cyberspace.

Rae uses Photoshop to create her abstract compositions. She layers her patterns on the canvas in the same way Photoshop layers are formed on a screen. Yet the results look natural and improvised, recalling psychedelic rock posters and traditional Oriental decorative prints, simultaneously. Sadly, most exhibitions are rarely as coherent, fascinating and beautiful as this.

Snapped up by the Waddington Galleries right out of art school and short listed for the Turner Prize soon thereafter, Fiona Rae, the English wunderkind, continued to make a dazzlingly impressive spectacle of herself in her first one-person show in the U.S. Her new series of similarly configured, tightly packed large paintings gives off a flat, artificial light which - like cinematic lighting - warns the viewer that something is up. Abrupt spatial transitions, erratic rhythms and the use of denatured colours (off-purples, off-blues, off-greens, off-reds) identify these canvases as post-modern sites self-consciously constructed out of a number of contradictions: spontaneity and calculation, emotional intensity and psychological distance, the serious and the comic, abstraction and representations of abstraction. As the eye scans these united but annotated pictures - United (red and pale blue), United (purple and brown), for example - it seems to collide with Malcolm Morley-like detonations held together by Hans Hofmann rectangles, while biomorphic whimsies out of Miro are overlaid by Richter smears, Liechtenstein brushstrokes, Polke scribbles and de Kooning, Schnabel and Basquiat gesticulations - as well as intimations of Picasso, Pollock, Motherwell and so forth, all deconstructed and reassembled. Rae's work is a mini-museum of abstract art, where modernism's anxiety of influence has been checked in the coatroom.

The surface is fragmented, layered. interlocked rectangles and squares are interrupted by curvilinear segments combined in allusive shapes, suggesting architecture, Mickey Mouse's ears, the shaft of a tilted, free-floating penis, bullet or lipstick. Smaller rectangles, some painted with melting edges, some looking like they've been cut with pinking shears, are balanced by splashes and rubbings of paint. Rae finishes by crossing the canvas with long, thick, looping lines, bold diagonals, drips - which run up, down and sideways - whorls, scratches, tangled nests of small X-strokes, barbed-wire hatching's and rapid-fire lobs of colour which explode like fireworks or bombs, freeze-framed.

Irritating, ingratiating, challenging and self-deprecating, Rae's art is a cacophonous tour de force of simultaneous readings. Juggling modernism's baggage, she gleefully keeps it all up in the air for a spellbinding moment. But beyond that, what comes through and sustains the work is an artful innocence and deeply felt, instinctive pleasure in pushing paint around. For many, this remains a means to authenticity.

Her aim has always been to draw together as many painterly motifs, as many of abstract paintings' devices as possible, and that takes mastery. Here she unites clouds of colour, guttural surface marks, linear curls which transform into vegetal forms, bars of colour like lasers of light and much else, not least an ensemble of the kinds of cartoon figures currently fashionable in some East Asian cities - cute girls, cute deer, cute lettering. Rae was born in Hong Kong, and since travelling back there some years ago she has been producing paintings laden with these urban Oriental motifs. Of course, uniting such disparity requires a trickery, and although the formal character of her pictures might seem chaotic, lines are drawn and bold forms and colours employed in strategic spots to pull everything together in very traditional ways. Ultimately, for all their anarchy, these pictures have the quality of landscapes, with the little deer leaping about over the flames and clouds and roots, and other characters appearing overhead in what counts as sky. Some pictures have a richer sense of depth than others, but ultimately the sense of land, horizon, foreground and background is straightforward.

But what continues to nag is the question of mood. Take a picture like Value Coordinate No .1 It's Sweet: uplifting pink lends the overriding mood, with a smokey cloud of purple sweeping across the canvas and little deer gambling among a scattering of black hearts. Is this sad, or happy, or double happy? Comparing it with Look! Look! Look!, which hangs adjacent to it, doesn't help us to conclude: this is a rich, dark, black forest gateau of a picture, with the deer hopping about over pink smoke on a black ground. Maybe it is reductive to look for good and bad moods in the pictures, but the problem is that there is no substantial qualitative difference of mood of any kind, in any of the pictures. Rae's ambition to unite all motifs (and thus, effectively, to empty out their meaning), leaves behind a very exhilarating confusion but one which is emotionally flat. Perhaps there's commentary in this, concerning the disturbing rigidity in that Eastern culture of cute, but to defeat this culture Rae has to rise above it, and this she is struggling to do.

Rae’s paintings are serious, but not deep. They are expressive, but cool. A Pollock squiggle is simply a squiggle, not the symbolic torture of the artist’s soul. Just as it was in the 1960's, continual appropriation and juxtaposition works to flatten cultural elements out -- the targets, the Expressionist smears, the dribbles are all copies of copies. Rae’s work plays in this arena of the flat and empty signifier. The Miró-inspired biomorphic forms, the Twombly-esque scratches, and the Disney allusions that critics love to identify: all fly past in Rae’s conglomeration of cultural influences and adopted techniques. She admits that she shares the mockingbird aesthetic of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, borrowing motifs and moods from all genres to create her own work. She sees her painting process as a form of editing: “A whole painting is a series of edits. To edit is to shape something and adjust it and cut things out. To sound bite is to take it out and present it as a summing up moment. There may well be sound bites in painting as a consequence of skilful editing.”

As her work matured, her canvases elongated into balanced compositions that traversed all  modes of technique and colour, capturing her thought processes. With an explanation that sums up well her content and technique, Rae has noted, “The improvisation is a permanent record of a series of transient moments.” The cultural allusions in her work can be read as a kind of social timeline, a two-dimensional representation of the transient moments in recent popular history. Which is why critics love to talk about her -- they love that they get it. Those who praise her are delighted that they’re in on the joke. Those who sneer when a painting looks like an early story board for “The Matrix” don’t like having their erudition rendered obsolete: they can’t unpack her latent obsessions or influences because everything is obvious. Either way, there’s no denying that Rae’s canvases play with the surface of our culture.

In her own words, the colour forms "are ambiguous in their relationship to the embroiling ground and yet they are constituent in a world where one element is reliant on the next in order to construct meaning and make things visible." It is this ambiguity: varied texture, constant shifting of figure and ground, layering of elements in a kind of weave, drop shadows, etc. that rewards close inspection of the paintings. They are generous in respect to eye-candy.

Young British Artists or YBAs  also Brit artists and Britart  a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists derived from the Sensation Saatchi Gallery Exhibition.

How to Hang Your Art

There's no question that art transforms your home like few other design elements can. Hung art defines your personal aesthetic. It says, this collection is important enough to see every day of our lives. You've probably felt the frustration before: A blank wall stands, undecorated. Pieces of art wait nearby, bright but unused. Time passes. Where do you start? Take heart, there is a right way to hang art.

Now you have selected a beautiful piece of art to complement your interior, it's time to hang it. Here are some top tips to keep in mind:

Avoid hanging one small picture on a huge expanse of wall - art looks better when it seems to extend the lines of furniture, windows or doorways. Once you've chosen pieces, scout out possible hanging locations. If you're developing a grouping, test your placement on the floor first. Groupings should start higher, because you'll be adding pieces as you go along. In general, larger pieces look better on top, smaller ones on the bottom. Offsetting works in a collection, but if you're trying to achieve simplicity, then don't be afraid to line things up.

Decide where to hang the artwork, keeping in mind the type of feel you'd like your room to have. The way in which you hang art can make a big difference. Smaller pieces hung together will overwhelm a small room. However, grouping multiple pieces in a larger room adds interest. The right piece of art also makes nooks and crannies more warm and inviting.

Art tends to look best when it seems to extend the lines of furniture, windows or doorways, or when several small pieces are grouped together.

Sketching the wall, furniture, and artwork on graph paper beforehand can help you decide where to hang your art by allowing you to visualize the final room and by conveying the size and the scale of the pieces you are working with.

Large pictures look best countered over sofas or consoles. They are meant to be the focal point of the room and work well within a large expanse of wall space. Allow 4 to 5 inches from the top of a sofa, slightly higher for a console.If there's one thing that people consistently get wrong when it comes to placing art, it's hanging height. You may have heard that artwork must be hung at eye level. Not true. Pieces should be placed in relation to what's under and around them. Typically, art is hung too high and should be lowered. If your ceiling is 15 feet high, for instance, pictures should still hang just 5 and a half feet off the ground. Above-mantle pieces, if the art isn't leaning, it should be hung approximately 6 inches over the mantle. Leave 10 inches clearance above sofas and headboards. Be wary of hanging anything above arched furniture, because the lines conflict.

Also be aware that how you display your art is as personal a statement as the work itself. For example, you may want to hang a painting where it’s visible to you when seated in your favourite reading chair.

Once you’ve decided where you’d like to hang your art, measure to find the centre of the piece. Allow for the drop of wire, and make a mark on the wall where you will put the hanger.

To hang art, a tape measure, hammer and small nails are essential. If the art is heavy, you'll need wall anchors, likely two per painting. Some people use picture hangers with integrated hooks, which are inexpensive and effective, but no better than a nail, in my experience.
Use a pencil or tape to mark the top of the frame while your partner experiments with different heights, then measure off the distance from the top to the nail cross wire. This is where you insert the nail.
If you really want to be sure of nail placement, I recommend cutting butcher paper to represent the pieces, hanging it and leaving it up for a few days to get a feel for it before you do any hammering.

Hanging Art Securely If you're concerned about securing the hang, either because of child safety, or other structural reasons, you'll want to secure the work to the wall with hardware mounted on both sides.
Using hooks with holes, insert nails or screws and hang the piece directly on them. This method does require more accurate measurements and time.
What you put on your walls will change the way you feel about your home, and offer a window into your life for you and your guests to enjoy.
Use more than just nails. Choose an appropriate hook. You might want a two-piece nail-and-hook, or a one-piece hook with a disk that keeps the straight part from going completely through the wall. Heavier art should be hung with a hollow-wall anchor. A picture hook will protect your walls and bear the weight of the picture. If this sounds confusing, the easiest thing to do is purchase a picture hanging kit at your local hardware store. It contains everything you need to hang your art.

You can prevent the plaster or drywall from cracking by placing a piece of Scotch tape on the wall where you will insert the hook. Use a carpenters level to determine where the hooks should be placed. Your painting will remain straight without constant vigilance.

If your artwork is particularly heavy and you are hanging it on drywall only, you may want to use a stud or beam to hang your art. A stud is a slender wood or metal vertical structure that is placed as a supporting element in a wall. However, your standard nail and anchor hook that comes in a picture framing kit will suffice.Nail the picture hook into the wall where you've made a mark and carefully place the artwork on the wall, catching the wire on the hook. Straighten, step back, and enjoy.What you put on your walls will change the way you feel about your home, and offer a window into your life for you and your guests to enjoy. Register on eBay today!

Fiona Rae painting on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

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Fiona Rae Im Learning To Fly Painting on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

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