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| Prelude to a Dream | Where the Lilies Blow | The Curtain Rises |
| Artists Statement ~ Throughout my life I have always held a fascination for taking discarded items and giving them a new life. My early work was largely print-oriented, using bamboo intaglio to add an air of antiquity to my pieces. As my artistic career progressed so too did my love of sculpture and my discovery of the joys of painting. Recently leather and inked butterflies have become new and exciting parts of my artistic process. Using these mediums I express my yearning to preserve the fragility of memory. My paintings are an intensely personal reinterpretation of Victorian cabinet cards and tintypes. I look at thousands of Victorian photos before I choose the one which really speaks to me. These paintings are based on images of real people who have disappeared with only their image as proof that they existed at all. These images helped people to share their world in their own time and I feel that by repainting these wonderful and delicate images using clues within the photo I can create a new world of colour, romantic sentimentality and metamorphosis in which they can live anew. I hope that these images and the painstakingly preserved butterflies and collections of fetishistic dolls will serve to remind the viewer that without memory and reverence we may indeed lose our souls to an age obsessed with the transient and the disposable. |
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Fern lives in New Plymouth, New Zealand
More of her work can be seen on her website at www.fernpetrie.com
and on her blog at fernpetrie.blogspot.com
and on the Perth gallery website lintonandkay.com.au
email Fern at fernpetrie.art @ gmail.com (remove spaces)