Fiona Wilson is a UK based artist working from her studio in Bedford town centre.
“Working from life and using music to draw on memories, imagination and the sub-conscious my approach is expressive with a foundation in observational drawing. The aim is to capture a sense of uniquely human experiences, transient moments and images from the mind’s eye.”
Described as ‘Figurative Extraction’, Fiona’s semi-abstract works are made with a sense of immediacy and improvisation, and music plays an integral role in the intuitive development of each composition.
Working predominantly in Unison Colour soft pastels she often combines them with pencil, pan pastels and soluble graphite to build layered surfaces rich in texture and spatial depth. Areas of concealment and erasure are as significant as the marks that remain with absence becoming a presence within the work. Fiona also works in oils and acrylics when scale and surface demand a different physical engagement.
Artist bio
Figurative-Extraction
“For me, what’s particularly interesting and satisfying about Fiona Wilson’s art lies at its semi-abstract core, which I’m naming ‘Figurative-Extraction’; it’s the non-representational, often forgotten, abstracted language of brilliant colour, tumbling line, rippling texture, gestural mark-making and dynamic shape referencing the real world, that Fiona Wilson successfully correlates to blossoming landscape or oxygen-rich human figure.
Blending reality towards expression, Wilson’s conceptual semi-figurative abstraction touches truths and ideas about time, space, feelings, thoughts and memory, within a strong invented pictorial design that’s theatrically complex in composition, I can only describe it as live performance on paper.
Her art has energy. Her art has a voice. I hear it.”
Fiona Wilson’s ‘Figurative-Extraction’ by Estelle Lovatt FRSA
Exhibitions & Achievements
2026 | Longlisted for Visual Art Open, London
2026 | Longlisted for Artist of The Year - Visual Artists Association
2026 | Muse, Solo Exhibition, The Arc, Bedford
2026 | Selected Artist, Eagle Gallery Open Exhibition, Bedford
2025 | Shapeshifters Solo Exhibition, The Stables, Wavendon
2024 | Longlisted for Women In Art Prize
2023 | The Art Binge, Group Show, The Quarry Theatre, Bedford
2023 | Glass Ceiling, Solo Show, The Arc, Bedford
2022 | Inspire Exhibition, Goldington Academy, Bedford
2021 | Eden, Group Show, The Arc, Bedford
2020 | Trace Exhibition with Jean-Luc Almond, John Bunyan Museum, Bedford
2019 | Unboxed Solo Exhibition, The Basement, John Bunyan Museum, Bedford
2018 | NOHAT: Woman Shall Inherit The Earth, Panacea Museum, Bedford
2018 | HSF Art Fair, Whitestone Pond, Hampstead – awarded the Colour Prize
2018 | Hampstead School of Art End of Year Staff & Student Exhibition, London
2018 | Hampstead School of Art Dr Eithne Healy Student Show, London
2017 | Hampstead Artists Council Exhibition, Renzo Piano Building, London
2016 | Alan Gouk Inspires Exhibition, HSoA Gallery, London
2015 | Kaleidoscope, Joint Exhibition with Jean-Luc Almond, Art Centre & Gallery, Bedford