Mary Fedden

This oil wonderfully combines Mary Fedden's signature motifs of still life, animals and landscape painting. Its colour palette, including the vibrant blue outline around each individual element, echoes that of her husband’s artwork. The devoted couple travelled and created work together for nearly 40 years, before Trevelyan’s passing in 1988. Olive Oil can be seen to illustrate a turning point of Fedden’s practice: moving from her late husband’s inspiration into her 2000’s work, where objects have been largely reduced to simplified shapes and blocks of bright contrasting colours, arranged across a plain or patterned background.