Aug 24

Linda McFetridge

Linda McFetridge is a contemporary painter who has exhibited consistently throughout New Zealand as well as a show in Paris at the 59 Rivoli Gallery. Recent exhibitions include three solo features over the years at Koru On Devon Gallery in New Plymouth as well as a couple of shows at Flagstaff Gallery in Devonport, Auckland. Linda’s work has been highlighted in curated collections by both Saatchi Art and Artmajeur. She grew up on a dairy farm on the coast of Taranaki, New Zealand and only started painting at the age of 36.

The portfolio becomes defined through three sets of series: Out of the Blue, Walk with Me, and Abstracts. Linda’s approach to painting ranges from naturalistic to photo realism to expressionism and total abstraction.These collections of paintings have a clean, crisp definition of form, high contrast, and cleverly cropped elliptical compositions. These isolated landscape moments create intimate poetic contemplations about the viewer’s relationship with nature.

There remains a focus on landscapes throughout the works, even in the Abstracts series whose paintings resemble forms of pools of water such as lakes or waterfalls. What separates the Out of the Blue and Walk with Me series from other landscape art remains the cropped space to reflect congestion and sense of coziness along with the play of light to give off an atmosphere of a cloudy mist in the air or reflections of moonlight. A quiet intensity becomes prevalent through these compositions between portions containing high contrast areas along with monochromatic space, almost like a Pink Floyd song ranging from vocals to deep electronic sounds inducing a sense of heightened awareness. Capturing a sense of fleeting moments, passage of time, and memory, Linda’s paintings convey a recurring theme of inner reflection with quiet stillness and ambiguity.

No Trespassing (pictured above) communicates a concept and metaphor of crossing forbidden boundaries through the portrayal of the Waikato River. The trees growing in the water appear as if gasping for air with the top of their limbs spreading out like pieces of debris. In the foreground we are shown a hint of grass indicating a view along the bank of the river. During the dark moonlight pressing upon the surface the viewer may notice the sky and water are virtually the same color creating an almost total monochromatic surface, minus the high contrast of the various foliage. Even the vegetation in the distance seems to have a glowing effect as their debris-like forms present a pleasant relationship between shades of blue and black.

Linda McFetridge creates puristic landscapes shaved off of any exercises in excess through still and cropped compositions presenting a clean, unified surface. The paintings are perfectly composed and consistently executed with virtually no areas of drastic variation, typically through the integration of monochromatic space in conjunction with high contrast forms. Linda can be described as a painter who creates quiet compositions revealing her various instincts to painting and nature in regards to rhythmical reflections. She delves into and creates a world which has the viewer questioning their surroundings as well as the purpose of ambience in curating moods.