“Coming Together” Solo mixed media art show by Fiona Green. Birdwood House,Totnes, April 20 - 26 daily 10 - 5pm
Born in India in 1943,Fiona spent her formative years as a child there,and in Australia. Making marks began aged four, with chalk on slate at her first school in the Himalayas. Her time in both countries had a life-long impact on her as an artist.
Fiona had the double privelege of going to Dartington School in 1958 and studying art at Dartington Hall - as one of only six students, She left and worked as an assistant to famous local printmaker,Susan Bosence. She went on to the Bath Academy of Art at Corsham, and left there to teach some of London’s most deprived young people. She first ran a school for truants, completing her career of 35 years,as Head of Service with 50 teachers, serving the London Borough of Southwark schools working with children who had severe emotional and behavioural difficulties.
Living in Fitzrovia with her husband, a poet & publisher,she kept “Open House’ for artists and musicians as a kind of bohemian ‘salon’ for over twenty years. The African National Congress held secret meetings there too, when they were a banned organization with Mandela in prison.
She says that “just for fun” she went back to college and did a Masters in ‘Textile Futures’ at St Martin’s aged 60. Now returned to living in Devon again, she has given herself permission to return to her art. She was commissioned to do a series of works for commercial hoardings in London, and for Transition Town Fitzrovia, she completed a series of portraits called “The People of Tottenham Street” which helped a community under threat from Developers regain some community spirit. A legacy which still continues in that fast growing area of central London.
This show is really a mini retrospective,looking back over all the years she has made art : while having her children,while teaching, and while helping couples as a therapist. Included in this rich and varied show, are examples of drawings,water and oil colours,etchings,and photographs as well as poems and textiles “My work is informed by my writing”, she concludes,”writing which examines origins. Origins of my heritage specifically, and so this show is my way of showing you – and myself – origins and themes in my work through drawing.All of it is, at root, about drawing and understanding line and colour. She hopes it will inspire you to make art too!
Her show opens on Easter Sunday for a week at Birdwood Gallery next to the Farmers Market at the top of town : 10am -5pm daily Fiona is a member of the Chelsea Arts Club & the Society of Authors
