Anne Farrell Art

I’m still here! Quietly working away on 3 or 4 paintings at once that I don’t want to show anyone just yet. January tends to be a productive month for me with it being school holidays.

‘Daydreaming Left-handed’, 2025
Oil on board, 30.5 x 40.5cm.

LONG post to make up for my unexplained absence and some details from paintings I'm not quite ready to show yet!

I have been working on a series of paintings titled ‘Cutouts’. These paintings on board feature layered cutouts and colour shifts. They have also been going through a process of painting, sanding and repainting.
A cutout isolates its subject, much like memory isolates moments from the past. This idea came from the experience of removing old photographs from their frames and noticing how the exposed areas had faded, while the sections protected behind the mount and frame retained their original richness. I loved this contrast as a metaphor: the visible, remembered fragments versus the hidden, time selectively altering what we see and remember.

Though the subjects are friends and their daughters, each portrait is also a self-portrait. Through them, I examine my own experience of time passing, especially the emotional impact of watching children grow. The work also continues to draw on my fascination with the Perceptual Theory of Time, contrasting a child's slow, vivid present with an adult's accelerating blur of years.
This work has been developed during my invaluable mentorship with renowned WA artist Kevin Robertson, an opportunity awarded through the 2024 City of Belmont Art Awards.

I will be exhibiting the completed work in August and Kevin has very kindly agreed to join me for an artist’s talk. Details to come – I will be banging on about it don’t worry.