© Fiona Denning Giving us a name doesn’t help anyone

Fiona Denning’s interior world bursts into HAF

Fiona Denning recently opened her studio to the public for Coastal Currents, the popular Hastings area September Festival . She, and her fellow artists in the St Leonards studio house, were hosts over two weekends to over three hundred and fifty curious art visitors. Now she has a show at Hastings Arts Forum, HOT’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths went along to see it.

It is amazing to stage another exhibition hard on the heels of the Coastal Currents open studios but Fiona has managed that – and, even more surprising, it’s different work. And big: the space at Hastings Arts Forum has given her the freedom  to exhibit larger canvases.

© Fiona Denning Reflecting on the Big Pink

Much has been written about Lockdown; some people got busy and achieved a lot of new work; others walked and enjoyed nature and others found they were so distracted that they could hardly read a book. Fiona was not only quite industrious, her work changed too.

She has always painted landscapes but during Lockdown with no-one being around, she was forced into an interior world. One day she noticed the reflection from the garden intruding into her kitchen – onto her bowls, vases and jugs. Later when painting, she imported as a backdrop, an image she had photographed when visiting Valencia of arched windows and a staircase.

Her colour palette also seems to have become lighter, more muted. However, she says that on reflection she feels the work has a resonance that harks back to previous work. “I’ve always painted landscapes and a bowl shape has often appeared in my paintings.” She adds,  “I can see every picture I’ve ever painted in these”. We all have our own overriding interests and concerns and artists are no different, so it could be said it is a little like authors – ostensibly writing the same book in different ways.

© Fiona Denning

And, like writers, sometimes artists find it hard to impose their will on their characters. When I ask about one of the images that appears misty and indistinct, she tells me, “that was my first one and I thought they would all be like that. But they refused, they simply said ‘no’ –  they didn’t want to disappear in the mist.” Instead they emerged as real characters in the paintings.

There are a few large pictures which are quite dark with some  bright areas. Fiona’s mother had dementia “I think I was painting those as my mother was disappearing, gradually seeping away before she died.” Sad, but a release for her mother.

Fiona moved to Hastings about six years ago and has embraced the town and made it her home,  “I’ve met loads of people and there is a vibrant art scene here which is very nourishing”. She now has a great studio in a house divided into artists’ studios that she can walk to and from along the sea front.“It takes half an hour there and back in the evening. It is a time when I can work out what I am going to do that day and reflect on that on the walk home in the evening.”

Fiona’s paintings are intimate and mysterious portraits of domestic objects, set within a landscape. They have a dreamlike quality, suggesting a relationship between the home and the imagined interior world. Some titles might suggest an air of mystery but you can feel what she is wanting to convey in images like Reflecting on the Big Pink, Wipe me away like a lipstick smudge, In some dark recesses.

© Fiona Denning Wipe me away like a lipstick smudge

I was rather drawn to two of the minimal paintings, outlines of vessels. One she said was painted in about 20 minutes, using up some paint at the end of the day. She thought she would paint over it the next day, but when she looked at it again she rather liked it and now it is one of her favourites. Never be too hasty

These images take her paintings out of the domestic into a wider arena. It is a vibrant show and with the repeating leitmotif of various vessels and  background landscapes they become familiar characters in the story.

Interior World is on until 2 October 2022 at Hastings Arts Forum,
20 Marine Court  TN38 0DX. Open Tuesdays–Sundays 11am–5pm.
Open evening, Friday 23 September 6–8pm.

Also in: Visual Arts