About

Donna Feneley is a Sydney-based landscape artist who completed a Masters of Art, majoring in painting, at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney, in 2013. Since then, she has been a finalist in a number of art competitions. In 2014, she was one of twelve artists selected from among a thousand to be hung in the inaugural Clyde and Co Art Project. The exhibition was conducted in the law firm’s rooms in Sydney. Also, Donna was part of an emerging artist show at the MComtemporary Gallery Woollahra.

Donna's solo show at Hazelhurst Gallery, Gymea in February 2016 and a recent exhibition in 2021 at DuckRabbit in Redfern attracted a wide interest and sold well. They led to several commissions for paintings.

In some of my works, darkness dominates the landscape, which is interrupted with splinters of light. In many the looming sky is heavy over the earth, suggesting an ominous storm. A sliver of light penetrates the terrain, creating a glimpse of the stillness or turbulence or beauty of the landscape. Often I aim to capture the whimsical childhood moments, such as lying on the riverbank and looking up through the trees to the vast sky. The child is not present in the picture; rather, the viewer is the child. My paintings can be at once foreboding and yet inviting. In most of my works, humans are absent – and yet I ask the viewer to be present, to be alone in the space. I often apply an undercoat of thin red cadmium to the paper or canvas, to add warmth, before building up thin layers of oil paint to create the composition. Some of my paintings are of no particular place. Rather, they are places of my imagination – and the looseness in the brush strokes helps in the conjuring of these landscapes. They can range from the illusory to the hyper real. These themes have preoccupied my art practice for several years, spurred by my wanderings through dark places and by my memories of a childhood in the outback, on the Hay Plains.