Fiona Rae

Fiona Rae is a British abstract painter and is one of the Young British Artists. She was born in Hong Kong in 1963 and moved to England in 1970. Her art education included Croydon College of Art (1983-84) and Goldsmiths College (1984-87).

Fiona Rae was one of the artists in the seminal Freeze exhibition curated by Damien Hirst in 1988.

Young British Artists or YBAs (also Brit artists and Britart) is a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors, and installation artists based in the United Kingdom. The term Young British Artists is derived from art shows of that name staged at the (Charles) Saatchi Gallery from 1992 onwards, which brought the artists fame and recognition.

Fiona Rae was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1991 and for the Austrian Eliette Von Karajan Prize for Young Painters in 1993. She was commissioned by Tate Modern to create a 10-metre triptych Shadowland for the restaurant there in 2002.

Fiona Rae is now a Royal Academician and also a Trustee of the Tate Gallery.


Painting (low resolution copy) by Fiona Rae, Untitled (yellow), 1990.

"I like lively, heartfelt and witty art that can also be cool and ironic. Doesn't necessarily have to be painting, but that's my favorite thing, partly because I think it's the hardest way to be fresh and original in the 21st century."
-- Fiona Rae, during a 2005 residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Enjoy a visit to Fiona Rae's studio; video from The Tate.



See my earlier post & video on Damien Hirst's Auction Gamble.

See a video of installation of Damien Hirst's colored-dot painting "John, John" at MoMA's Color Chart exhibition.