Fiona Blakey graduated from Glasgow School of Art with a BA(hons) in surface pattern design. Since then, she has pursued a multifaceted career as a self-employed artist and teacher. With years of experience in visual arts, Fiona has honed her skills and developed a unique artistic voice. Her studio in Taynuilt, Argyll, serves as a creative hub where she brings her ideas to life. While drawing remains her primary passion, Fiona has also explored a wide range of disciplines throughout her career. Her versatility and need to push her own artistic boundaries allows her to experiment freely, resulting in a diverse body of work. Recently Fiona has delved heavily into mixed media, combining various materials and methods resulting in a series of semi-abstract landscape. These works showcase her ability to blend imagination and technique.

“For a while I have been interested in creating and cultivating a mindset which allows for free artistic experimentation, encouraging curiosity and a child-like state of freedom from inhibition. This leads to opportunities for playful investigation of media and ideas. I start recognising structure and imagery that may arise from this initial experimentation and then I focus on the skills that are needed to bring a piece of art to a conclusion. During my creative process, there are various points when I fall in love with whatever I am working on. It could be the moment when the surface texture appears from layers of experimentation, when a landscape emerges from an abstract pattern or when I add some final loose drawing marks. It’s a delightful and gratifying experience. In the early stages of my most recent pieces, I have embraced the idea of pareidolia (the human ability to see shapes or make pictures out of randomness). I also seek to express images of landscapes that I have stored as visual memories, and combining these two elements has been the impetus for this body of work.”