About

Biography 

Fiona Craig is an award winning, fine artist and art teacher who paints flora, landscapes, still life, and portraits. Her style is contemporary realism, in media oils, watercolours, acrylics, pastels, or mixed media.

Fiona grew up in an artistic family in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Australia. She participated in informal and academic art studies. She has held numerous solo exhibitions, taught art to adults and children, and worked by commission for several decades. Her artworks are in private and public collections worldwide.

Fiona enjoys travel and experiencing sights in the natural environment and botanical gardens. For the past decade, she has been living in Australia and the USA, painting, exhibiting, and teaching. While her specialty remains Australian native flora, she has also enjoyed painting American landscapes, the flora of her local botanic garden in Chicago, and a few portraits. Like many artists of the past who travelled abroad to widen their artistic horizons, Fiona also finds that the diversity of subjects provided by contrasting environments provides new interest and motivation to keep making and developing her art.

Artist's Statement

"My art is about beauty, or al least my perceptions of beauty, whether it be a fresh floral bloom or a weathered old tree. It may be unconventional beauty that does not conform to trends, symmetry, or the 'picturesque'. It may be the subtle kind that takes time and contemplation to appreciate. My artist's eye seeks and sees beauty everywhere.

While many of my artworks look photographic, and photography is as important as my visual memory is as a reference source, I do not try to duplicate the subject in precise botanical details, or hyper- or photo-realistic technique. I render my subjects with a degree of artistic licence, with colour variations, and brush / pencil stroke decisions apparent (not blended completely smooth). This is more obvious when seeing my paintings and drawings in person rather than on the computer screen. My aim is therefore to depict beauty in both subject matter and artistic technique.

Beauty brings balance and joy to my world, and I hope it does likewise for the viewer of my artworks. I am conscious of preserving a moment, expression, or season in time, as nature is ephemeral, constantly moving, changing and sometimes disappearing forever. Making art is my way of reacting passionately to what I enjoy seeing. The art-making process itself involves me in a second, closer experience of the subject I want to depict or record, constructing it from scratch on the canvas and moulding it to try to evoke my interpretation and experience of it. There is hard work and sometimes pain and frustration in the process, but there is also beauty in the 'alchemy' of mixing and applying colours and tones to a blank surface to bring up an image that makes visual sense and emotional response. The balance and joy my art brings to me is in the various processes as well as their results."

-- Fiona Craig, 2022

Art Classes: Due to family commitments, there are currently no art classes scheduled for 2024.

Memberships Past and Present:

Oil Painters of America

Pastel Society of America

Pastel Society of Australia

International Honours Society (The University of Sydney, Pacific Region)

Gallery Representation:

Audrey Fine Art, Sydney, Australia

Source Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Turning Art, Chicago, IL, USA

Solo Exhibitions

2024: Audrey Fine Art, Sydney, Australia

2022: Audrey Fine Art, Sydney, Australia

2019: The Belmont by Reside Living, Chicago, USA

2018: Essentia Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

2017: The Milk Factory Gallery, Bowral, NSW, Australia

2017: Groshek Gallery, Chicago, IL, USA

2017: The Belmont by Reside Living, Chicago, IL, USA

2016: REDSEA Gallery, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

2016: Floressence, Wentworth Galleries, Sydney, NSW, Australia 

2012: Wentworth Galleries, Sydney, Australia

2000: Salmon Galleries, Sydney, NSW, Australia

1996: Linggar Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia.

1992: The Bell Gallery, Bowral, NSW, Australia

1991: Beaver Galleries, Canberra, ACT, Australia

1989: Von Bertouch Galleries, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

1989: Holdsworth Galleries, Wollahra, NSW, Australia

1988: Greenhill Galleries, Adelaide, SA, Australia

1988: Greenhill Galleries, Perth, WA, Australia

1987: Holdsworth Galleries, Sydney, NSW, Australia

1987: Von Bertouch Galleries, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

1983: Holdsworth Galleries, Sydney,NSW, Australia

1982 - 2000: Christopher Alexander Gallery, Wentworth Falls, NSW, Australia

1981: Holdsworth Galleries, Sydney, NSW, Australia

1979: The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Selected Group Exhibitions

2019: CAVA (Chicago Alliance of Visual Artists) Later Impressions, Evanston Art Center, IL, USA

2019: CAVA (Chicago Alliance of Visual Artists) Annual Show, Bridgeport Art Center, IL, USA

2018: Essentia Group Show, Essentia Chicago, IL, USA

2018: 8 x 8 Self Portraits, 33Contemporary Gallery, Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, IL, USA 

2018: The Milk Factory Gallery, Bowral, NSW, Australia

2017: Environment, Artshow Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

2017: Spring Show, The Milk Factory Gallery, Bowral, NSW, Australia

2016: Spring Show, The Milk Factory Gallery, Bowral, NSW, Australia

2015: Spring Show, The Milk Factory Gallery, Bowral, NSW, Australia

2013: Fleurieu Art Prize, SA, Australia

2013: Wentworth Galleries, Sydney, NSW, Australia

2012: Hunter's Hill Art Prize, Sydney, NSW, Australia

2009: Salon International, Greenhouse Gallery, San Antonia, TX, USA

2008: Out from Down Under, Agora Gallery, NYC, New York, USA

2006: Convergence Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, USA

200?: Camberwell Art Prize, Camberwell, VIC, Australia

1992: The Bell Gallery, Berrima, NSW, Australia

1988: Convergence Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA

1988: Von Bertouch Galleries, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

1987: Von Bertouch Galleries, Newcastle, NSW, Australia