Mary McFarlane

For background on the artist and works, see below.

Current Works

About the Artist

Mary McFarlane has developed a strong following for her transformations of mirrors, especially vintage pieces, into glimmering artworks full of mystery and memory, intensely personal to herself and to the viewer, created using her unique, evolved techniques. Some centre on the Waterfall motif, founded in trips to Fiordland throughout her life; these connect to New Zealand’s history of contemporary art from William Hodges’ 18th Century Fiordland paintings through to Colin McCahon’s influence on the waterfall becoming part of our visual identity. She has also continued her acclaimed Moon series works, based on the feeling the full moon inspires, full of portent. Her actual process remains as mysterious as the moons themselves, as David Eggleton described in a review in Art New Zealand in 2012: ‘McFarlane has learnt how to endow her mirrors with magic, alluding to the aura of inner beauty, to the dark side of the self.’

Recent Works

McFarlane’s Silent Order fossil concretions are shrine-like forms holding meditative space, created from fossilised shells and crab carapaces, the mudstone and sand aggregating around their forms over centuries or millennia. It is difficult to capture the glistening detail, the gold dust, the nuances of cascades suggested rather than defined, in photographs; these images here can only be approximations. We can provide further images on request.