Felicity Mara

The idea of painting as ‘responsive notation’ is central to Felicity Mara’s abstract practice. ‘My paintings are not literal descriptions, but I work with all that is around me. It is very much about the interface between the natural environment, which is constantly present at Porthmeor, and the intimate space of the studio, where I have my visual references and can listen to music.’

Mara’s work is typically on a large scale. It represents a fusion of exploratory calligraphic line – a kind of poetry of the brush that can be found in Japanese and Chinese painting – and areas of vivid colour, sometimes rapidly worked but often the result of a meditative process of adjustment and balancing. ‘Even a small amount of colour in the right place can change a painting and activate all the shapes. And all the time, I’m trying to retain that initial feeling of expansiveness, while reaching into something more intense – an inner core or heart of a painting.’ 

Her work is essentially lyrical, both in a directly expressive sense and in terms of its spatial choreography. ‘Sometimes I think of the studio as a theatre space, where things can be quiet one moment and animated the next.’ In recent years, her practice has included the making of semi-transparent, painted fabric panels, in dialogue with the works on canvas. ‘I hang them so that they filter the light, a bit like the process by which we’re always filtering our perceptions. They change the dynamic of the space.’

Felicity Mara trained at Camberwell School of Art and was awarded a Porthmeor Studios tenancy in 2012. Her recent exhibitions include large new works at Jenna Burlingham Fine Art, Morgans Gallery, Falmouth (2021, 2023) and Arc Padstow (2022), with a forthcoming solo exhibition at Projects 22 in 2025.