Gwenyth Fugard’s approach to painting lies somewhere between archaeologist and pattern cutter. Taking a process-led, yet spontaneous approach to her materials, she explores the act of painting with oil on a range of assembled textiles. She employs skills acquired through her time working in fashion and textile design and these have greatly informed the way Fugard approaches her practice. A process of measuring, tearing, cutting, and layering of textiles as she constructs the surface with methods of assemblage, folding, stitching, and painting.
Her paintings emphasise the construction of the painting and at times the excavation of the surface. Oscillating between excess and restraint, hesitancy and assertion, privacy, and disclosure, she applies the paint with various tools onto the prepared substrate. With minimalist restraint and led by the intention of a duality of forces uniting, she explores the notions of opposites and differing components working together. This is often suggested by imposing vertical or horizontal divisions through the surface of the canvas, so that contrasts sit side by side, giving each other strength and support.
It is on the periphery of the painting that her signature details are found and where light is encouraged in or shut out. This notion is an unavoidable consideration in her work and integral to Fugard’s compositions. The indeterminate surfaces with shifting tones of colour and surface contrasts, suggest landscape, not an identifiable landscape, but a sense of territory being navigated. The paintings are atmospheric and evocative, suggesting a landscape of emotion for the viewer to inhabit.
It is not until the work is fully underway that their full identity is realised with Fugard’s reflexive and spontaneous approach enabling the works to emerge. Fugard’s paintings are tactile living objects, with the textures and subtle interruptions emerging through her use of materials to create a palpable sense of a living, ‘breathing’ thing - they require the viewer to take the time to contemplate the deeper resonances of her works.
Statement
“Process and construct have been talked about in depth regarding Gwenyth Fugard’s work, but rarely light. The more one encounters Gwenyth Fugard’s work the more one can see that process and construct unravels light, which forms an important role in the paintings and taps into our spiritual subconscious. Whilst Fugard plays with the concept of open and closed composition, light is exposed in her paintings and creates an interplay between the surface and the viewer. Substrate, dimensions, colour, and textiles are all vital components to Fugard when commencing a painting, yet interestingly, never light, yet all create light, both illuminating and caliginous that create deeply emotive atmospheric works, that retain the notion of abstraction and configure a sensory response that literally draws the viewer into the surface plane and beyond, to an emotional space within and beyond the painting. ”