The Canvas is No Longer Blank
Selina Foote’s take on painting is a singular one. Her methodology may borrow directly from historic works, but it skews the relationship between these works and her own in unexpected ways. Her geometric abstractions utilise the paintings of others as points of departure to construct paintings of her own—but not by appropriation, nor by making a discernible visual reference to the originals.
Foote graduated with an MFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 2011 and was included in Prospect: New Zealand Art Now, City Gallery Wellington’s national sampler of contemporary art the same year. After being represented by Sue Crockford Gallery, she is now with Two Rooms, taking part in numerous art fairs, solo and group exhibitions, including the recent group show Model Painting, in which she shifted to working on a considerably larger scale. Foote was based in London and travelled extensively through Europe in 2013 and 2014, researching the work of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women artists. She currently lives and works in Auckland.
Foote’s process begins when a reproduction of a painting is chosen from a sea of possibilities. This is
