Now in her nineties, Jacqueline Fahey ONZM is one of few female career artists of her generation and she continues to push the boundaries of societal structures and politics within her work. Combining vivid portrayals of urban and suburban landscapes with figurative components, she makes observations of people and how we live and communicate. With the rich use of colour and intimate detail in her compositions, her work challenges the status quo and encourages new ways of looking.

Married and a mother to three early in her painting career, the stifling gendered society of 1950s and 1960s New Zealand saw Fahey adopt unconventional colour, technique, and subject matter to reflect and actively challenge the status quo of the gender divide. Yet embedded in the artist’s pugnacious approach is a great level of affection for the women and relationships portrayed, evident in the careful detail bestowed on traditionally ‘female’ interests – clothing, interior textiles, bouquets- elevating the decorative female space above the austere settings more familiar to portraiture.

In addition to painting, Fahey is a novelist, having published a novel and two volumes of memoirs. In 1997 she was named an Officer of New Zealand Merit (ONZM) for her services to art, and in 2013 she was granted an Arts Foundation Icon Award, the organisation’s highest honour and restricted to a circle of twenty living artists.

Gow Langsford Gallery has represented Jacqueline Fahey since 2020.