Fi's work often begins with small everyday encounters with places, people, objects, or materials, looking for poetry in the tangible.
All of these small works come from her experience of the local environment in East Sussex and fall into two groups. One group were born from a period of concentrated drawing at an overgrown allotment site. In these, she has used intense liquid watercolour on handmade Japanese paper, or on sized light, linen, and includes sections of raw or painted sycamore veneer for its lovely, figured pattern, colour, and texture.
The second group developed from ideas about geology, rock strata, edges, tides, and currents. They are about the coastal landscape rather than directly observed.
Fi has used the qualities of different plywood and wood veneer scraps, printmaking (Japanese woodblock), paint on linen and paper, splitting, carving, and incising the plywood to reveal its layers and adhesives. The colour palette comes from geological maps of the area.
Fi combines defined shapes, territories, boundaries, and borders with accidental, fluid, and instinctive elements. The stories, associations and properties of materials often lead the work.
The works are treated with archival anti-UV spray and finished with layers of polished cold wax. She likes the idea that they can exist as objects without additional glass and framing.
Earlier in 2024 she travelled to Japan to explore woodblock printing and is excited by the potential of this unique and beautiful printmaking practice for her work.
She grew up in Holmfirth, on the edge of The Pennines and studied Fine Art in Liverpool and Public Art at Chelsea School of Art.
Her work has been shown in local and national exhibitions including Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, Ty Pawb International Print exhibition, Wells Contemporary and Royal West of England Academy, Rye Art Gallery, and Lido Stores Margate.
She now lives and works in Hastings.
