Felicity Mara was born in London and studied Fine Art in Camberwell, though her works are intimately connected to the artistic heart of Cornwall, St Ives. Moving to the Duchy in 1994, she is now based at Porthmeor Studios, a space on the edge of the Atlantic which was used by Ben Nicholson and Sir Terry Frost.
It is from here that she creates her elegantly spare pictures from abstracted forms in the much the same way that the St Ives school did in the 60s. Subject matter can be found, with vistas through windows, still lifes and waveforms alluded to in the sweeping marks of her brush. Felicity's sparse marks show the restraint of minimalism, so much more impressive in the usually large scale of her canvases. To create these striking lines, Felicity uses a wonderfully fresh palette and by leaving sections of the canvas unpainted her pictures echo the textures of the coastal landscape seen from her studio.
"My paintings are not literal depictions of the things around me, but I work with all these things in a sense - the landscape outside my window, the space inside my studio, the changing angles of sunlight, the sounds that float up from the beach – to express a visual equivalent of what’s actually there."
