Women in Art Fair Spotlight | 9th-12th October 2024 | Mall Galleries: Women in Art Fair returns with a challenging programme for London Frieze Week

Daisy McMullan

b. 1985, UK

Daisy McMullan is an artist making richly layered paintings that document the natural world; inspired by magical realism and the ever-changing soul of the landscape, her paintings use expressive colour and mark-making to create otherworldly interpretations of the everyday. Her shimmering work captures the glimmers of hope and joy to be found in the natural world, should we choose to look closely enough.

Daisy’s paintings feature the verges, lines and paths that mark out ways of navigating the world both physically and emotionally. They feature places she walks regularly; overlooked, common spaces that belong to everyone and no-one. They are small wildernesses, uncultivated and irregular. Daisy uses these to create imaginative compositions that play with sacred geometries of nature, with multiple layers of colour and glazes giving a sense of hidden depth and stories hidden within.

Each painting is a meditation on an interaction with the natural world – a rewilding of the mind, the self, the soul. The Romantic ideals of returning to nature, individual spirituality, and treading ancient paths to commune with the metaphysical are highly influential on the process of making these works. They also reference Dutch Golden Age still life amd forest floor painting, where life, death and spirit are carefully balanced and observed in sharply contrasting tones. The expressive mark making Daisy uses references Abstract Expressionism, particularly the work of Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner. There is also a particular Englishness about the world depicted in Daisy's paintings that resonate with the work of Albert Durer Lucas or Lucien Freud's approach to paiting plants.

The works are records of nature, preserving the seemingly unimportant for a future time. However, they are as much about the technology and theory of painting, constant and rigorous experiments with colour, opacity, viscosity and temperature. Daisy uses a carefully chosen palette of colours to render plantlife in a uniqie way that gives feeling, texture and movement to her paintings.
Natural forms are built using combinations of free, expressive strokes, textural stipplings and folk art inspired lines forming leaves and petals. The use of tonal layers, similar in the construction of a screenprint, helps to build in movement and the tension of translucent and more opaque forms. A key technique of underpainting, inspired by past masters adds luminous depth. These ideas and techniques are built up gradually, adding colour and light in increments until a beautiful image finally emerges from the dark.

Daisy trained as a fine artist at Wimbledon School of Art and Camberwell College of Arts, receiving a BA(hons) in Painting in 2007. She later studied for a Masters in Curating at Chelsea College of Art and Design, and was awarded a two-year Research Fellowship in 2012 at Chelsea Space, a public gallery at the College. Daisy works now as an artist, educator and curator.

Daisy’s notable solo exhibitions include: Observed Imagined Remembered, Cass Art Kingston (2022), and Rewildings, Dorking Museum (2022). She has exhibited in group shows including HERO, Great West Gallery (2024), Abstract Worlds, Croydon Art Space (2023), Winter Group Show, Folkestone Art Gallery (2023), and the Young Masters Invitational Exhibition, The Exhibitionist Hotel (2023/24). Daisy made her debut at the British Art Fair at the Saatchi Gallery with Cynthia Corbett Gallery in 2023, and will return with a new body of work on linen in 2024. She was also shortlisted for the SAA Artist of the Year People’s Choice Award in 2022.

Daisy works from her studio in Brixton, south London, creating paintings and exhibitions that reflect on nature and place. The works become emotional documents, depicting unseen feeling as much as they record the world that we can see.

Olga Morozova

b. 1972, Kyiv, Ukraine

Olga Morozova received a master's degree in painting from the National Academy of Arts and Architecture in 1998. She has participated in more than twenty solo exhibitions and over one hundred group exhibitions and international projects. In 2019, Morozova represented Ukraine in Dubai at the exhibition ‘Women Artists from 100 Countries’; in 2022 she took part in the exhibition of Ukrainian artists as part of the Venice Biennale; and in December 2022 she will represent Ukraine at the Asian Art Bienniale in Bangladesh.

Morozova consciously chose the Fauvist palette, adopting the strong colours and fierce brushwork style. Working intuitively, Morozova boldly layers colours to create eye-catching compositions. The powerful temperament of an outwardly fragile woman is embodied in the graphic focus on the motif, in expressive and improvisational writing, in ornamental and decorative solutions. In her works, there is a sensual Dionysianism, which is wonderfully combined with her manner of painting. Morozova’s paintings are impressive, like stained glass windows, and create a luminous aura around them.

Olga Morozova collaborated in November 2022 with artist and jeweller Phoebe Walsh on the exhibition Flowers From The Front Line. Flowers From The Frontline Series was on show at the Archivist exhibit, in the Garden Museum, from November 12th to December 22nd 2022. After touring, the series will be auctioned individually to raise money for Artists in Ukraine: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/ In addition, filmmaker Carmela Corbett is currently working on a feature length documentary entitled Flowers From The Frontline, which will explore the artist’s life and the power of art created during war.

Cristina Schek

b. Transylvania

Cristina Schek is the photosensitive kind. She thinks in pictures; her imagination is always in focus. A Transylvanian Surrealist now rooted in London, Schek crafts conceptual work that explores identity and the nature of representation, with literature, films, and art history as her muses. Her true passion lies in storytelling—venturing into the unknown, layering, and crafting images into creative compositions.

About 'Fern Girl':

“Inspired by my love of nature, ‘Fern Gil’ is a construct of my imagination, a divine embodiment of vegetation, a Forest Goddess, an emblem of the birth-death-rebirth cycle of the natural year. She is made of prehistoric ferns from the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and she has survived several mass extinctions. She speaks to us profoundly and serves as a powerful voice in today's ecological upheaval. It's our duty to protect this miraculous entity, as if she were a child in our care." Cristina Schek

Press: 'Fern Girl' featured in Widewalls Magazine

Schek's portfolio is celebrated on a global scale, highlighted by prestigious exhibitions and art fairs such as the London Art Fair, Art Miami, NY Art Fair, LA Art Show. Her notable achievements include Young Masters Focus On The Female Art Created During Lockdown Award 2021 for her work 'Florence Lightingale', receiving recognition at Phillips Auction House with the BFAMI Art Exhibition 2022 and winning the W4 Fourth Plinth with 'The Ceiling In The Sky' monumental 4x4m public art installation in 2023. This prestigious recognition follows in the footsteps of Sir Peter Blake, whose artwork was the inaugural work on display.

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