Open for the first time this weekend, the studio of painter Victoria Fernandez in Sanctuary Point is brimming with jewel-coloured still life paintings that present little collections of objects, “each one a character”, against dramatic, dark backgrounds representing interior narratives that invite the viewer to make up their own joyful, playful stories.
There’s a new stop on the Jervis Bay Arts Trail this month as still life painter, Victoria Fernandez opens the doors to her home studio in Sanctuary Point to visitors who will be treated to a glimpse of her art practice in motion alongside finished works ready to find their new homes.
Victoria ‘s studio – a converted space in her garage in Sanctuary Point – has a sunny garden outlook through large glass doors and the peaceful presence of Monty, the golden retriever (and new addition, puppy Isla the groodle) and walls lined with still life paintings set on slim shelves that run the length of the wall.
High Contrast, Lots of Drama
“I’ve always been interested in still life,” says Victoria. “I find it more of a reflection of an interior life, as a metaphor. I was working at Vinnie’s at the time [I started painting] so I was collecting all these crazy objects that I put into my paintings. Each object is like a character, and [each painting] is a freeze frame of a moment in its own internal play.”
With a background in fine art photography, Victoria’s eye for composition is finely tuned, and her palette, she says, is drawn from her desire to find the drama.
“I have always looked for the drama even when I was a fine art photographer, living in France and I did a series of interiors of chapels, especially forgotten, crumbling chapels. The interior element is something that’s always in me.
“I did works where I was looking for animals then trying to make that dramatic.”
Victoria’s fine art photography has been described as being in the “magical realism” genre, and she says that same voice – the high contrast, the drama, the composition – has definitely carried through into her career as a painter.
Art in Motion
Photography remains a core component of her work, with a photograph as the reference point for most of her paintings. Visitors to the studio will see this process, as Victoria describes:
“I have a dedicated table that I put outside on a nice day so I can get some good light and I assemble the objects, that is usually a central object that I want to make a visual story about. Then I collect other objects that I think will make an interesting juxtaposition.”
She hopes that visitors will engage with her paintings the way she does, “as something joyful and playful and a little bit mysterious and dark”.
“The idea is that it’s not all spelled out for you,” she says, making reference to the history of symbolism in still life paintings, “the story is what you make of it.”
She adds: “Still life is an old tradition, and it’s always intrigued me, it’s that internal element. The reason I stopped photographing is that I wanted to go further and be more self-expressive.
“Because it’s your hand, I feel like painting is coming from inside me out, rather than with a photograph it’s outside in. With photographs I’d search for days for the right photograph, and it would often be very frustrating. With painting I can have total power to do what I will with it.”
From Photography to Painting
Photography was a childhood passion that became a career for Victoria. While her father, a diplomat, was an amateur photographer, it was seeing the billboard for the film, Blow-up, that was a seminal moment in her mind.
“I was 10 years old and I saw the billboard and there was a person holding a camera and I thought, I’m going to be a photographer,” she recalls. “From that moment on, I was convinced. My father gave me a camera and we used to print my photos in the bathroom.”
From those early experiences with her Pentax SLR from her father, Victoria attended Le Cambre art school in Brussels, then finished her fine art degree at UNSW in Sydney.
“I didn’t move into colour until art school when they taught us how to develop colour and there was a printer. After art school I went back to black & white. I was working photographing art for reproduction, I worked in museums, catalogue work, that sort of thing, so I managed to earn a living as a photographer.”
Victoria pursued her own fine art photography as well, producing several solo exhibitions and acclaimed work that is held in collections such as the Art Gallery of NSW.
Two Decades across France and Sydney
For two decades, Victoria lived in France (and around 5 months each year in Australia) with the British/Australian figurative painter, Fred Cress. It was a personal and professional relationship, with Victoria acting as translator and photographer for Cress’s career and publications.
Her photographic work – including the chapels and animals – was represented by galleries in Sydney and Europe and she had several solo exhibitions. An AGNSW publication, along with a black and white photo of a black horse in a field, titled “Ophelia” (1998), describes her thus: “Her focus … is on the mysterious and strange within the natural environment. While the move from colour to black & white photography allows for a play between dark and light – and therefore the metaphors associated with both – Fernandez’s concerns remain the same. She is fascinated with the evocative nature of the relationship between good and evil, exhalation and brutality.”
Victoria says: “I’ve always been drawn to the dark side of things. Fred was very much drawn to the dark side as well. I think it rubbed off on me, he was very brightly coloured and there was a stinging element that he would put in. I would say that my work is a lot sweeter than his but I like to have a little bit of mystery.”
Digitisation project with Jervis Bay Maritime Museum
Victoria’s career is now somehow coming full circle, as she assists the Jervis Bay Maritime Museum with the mammoth task of digitising their collection through photography.
As a volunteer at the Museum, Victoria mentioned her background in museum photography – including a stint at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney in the late 1980s before she moved to France – which has reignited the project here in Jervis Bay.
Along with museum director Diana Lorentz, Victoria is assisting with the setup of a studio, and even travelled to the current National Maritime Museum to spend a day with their photographer.
Take a Journey on the Jervis Bay Arts Trail
On the last Saturday of the month, a diverse range of artist across the Bay & Basin region open their studios to visitors on the Jervis Bay Arts Trail, 10am-3pm.
The details of the open studios and where to find them are updated before each Trail day on their website, along with a description of the artists’ work.
Read more of our stories about the artists on the Trail:
