Fiona O’Byrne

Born 1973, Warrnambool, Victoria.

Fiona O’Byrne is an Australian artist who paints delicate still lives and portraits, using her immediate domestic environment to create vignettes of quiet simplicity and classical harmony. Employing mainly traditional methods of oil on canvas overlaid on panelboard, the artist creates rich tonal paintings that are marked by sparse, carefully arranged compositions.

O’Byrne has been a finalist in a number of prominent portrait prizes, including The Lester Prize and the Shirley Hannon National Portrait Award (both in 2020) and the AME Bale Art Prize (2016, 2018 and 2020).  She was also recipient of the Norma Bull Portraiture Scholarship in 2015.  As well as continuing to practice as a landscape architect in Melbourne, the painter also teaches art workshops in her spare time.

Refreshingly modest and contemplative, Fiona O’Byrne’s artworks offer the viewer a reflective experience, an opportunity to slow down from our busy lives and let our eyes rest and calmly observe.  In a social media whirl of Instagram and Tik Tok, where images constantly shout ‘look at me’, her paintings gently draw you in and teach you how to look closely and quietly with your heart and mind.

Excerpt — THE STILLNESS WITHIN by Victoria Hynes