The Timaru-born painter who put domestic life on the canvas
1929–
ARTIST
WRITER
Jacqueline Mary Fahey was born in Timaru in 1929. She later attended Teschemakers boarding school near Oamaru and studied at Canterbury College School of Art, graduating with a Diploma of Fine Arts in 1951.
At art school she learned from Russell Clark, Bill Sutton and Colin Lovell-Smith and spent time with women artists including Rita Angus, Doris Lusk and Juliet Peter. Their example helped her treat art as serious professional work at a time when women artists were still regularly dismissed or overlooked.
Fahey’s paintings brought the crowded domestic lives of women onto large, ambitious canvases. Her 1959 Suburban Neurosis series is recognised by Auckland Art Gallery as some of the earliest feminist art made in New Zealand. Rather than idealising the home, she painted its clutter, relationships, fatigue, humour and tensions from a woman’s point of view.
In 1964, Fahey and Rita Angus organised an exhibition at Wellington’s Centre Gallery that included equal numbers of women and men. The Arts Foundation describes it as almost certainly New Zealand’s first deliberately gender-balanced art exhibition.
Her influence extended into teaching and writing. She lectured at the Elam School of Fine Arts and published fiction and two memoirs. In the 1997 New Year Honours, she was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to art. She received the Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2013.
Fahey’s connection with Timaru did not end with her birth. Aigantighe holds two of her paintings in its permanent collection, including Christine in the Pantry.
Jacqueline’s contribution was to insist that women’s everyday experiences belonged within serious art. Kitchens, children, relationships and domestic pressure were not minor subjects. In her paintings, they became evidence of how society worked and whose experiences had previously been left outside the frame.
Read the WuHoo story: About Artist Jacqueline Fahey
Sources
Auckland Art Gallery: Jacqueline Fahey
Supports her Timaru birth, training, Suburban Neurosis and contribution to feminist art.
Arts Foundation: Jacqueline Fahey ONZM
Supports her exhibitions, writing, gender-balanced exhibition and 2013 Icon Award.
Aigantighe Art Gallery: Christine in the Pantry
Confirms the painting’s place in Aigantighe’s collection and its recent exhibition context.
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet: New Year Honours 1997
Officially confirms her ONZM for services to art.