Maria Farrar

Maria Farrar was born in the Philippines in 1988 and brought up in Shimonoseki, Japan until the age of 15. She then moved to London, England where she now lives and works.

Farrar paints scenes derived from her everyday life or from fragments of memories. These scenes include women walking a dog or gazing into the window of a bread shop, a garden as seen through a window and make-up scattered over a dressing table. The captured moments are concrete and yet at the same time, they contain a sense of elusiveness and the feeling of a floating and expanding world. In her earlier work, Farrar used bright pigments on a raw linen support. The warm grey tones of the linen complement the pigments' colours, causing them to appear deeper and stronger. Her thick outlines and the sweep of a person's silhouette are reminiscent of East Asian calligraphy with its smudges and dry brush. Farrar is clearly aware of the views and senses which she cultivated while growing up in Japan. Among the many Japanese characteristics of her work are the calligraphic use of brushes, close ups and the unpainted margins. Farrar remarks on this as the idea of coming and going between the East (calligraphy, manga) and the West (raw lines, large oil paintings) in terms of technique, colour, narrative and reality. "Employing old techniques and acquiring new paths" is how she explains her attitude as a painter.

[Maria Farrar] (b. 1988, Philippines) was raised in Shimonoseki, Japan, before she moved to the UK where she received her BFA from the Ruskin School of Art in 2012 and her MFA from Slade School of Art in 2016. Her solo exhibitions held by Ota Fine Arts include “Girls Being Girls,” Shanghai (2023), “Overseas,” Tokyo (2021), “Spring,” Shanghai (2020), “Too late to turn back now,” Singapore and Tokyo (2019). She also participated in group exhibitions including “Home Sweet Home,” The National Museum of Art, Osaka (2023). “Katja Farin, Maria Farrar, Esme Hodsoll, Alyina Zaidi,” Alexander Berggruen, New York (2023), “— Thinking about Caring and Motherhood through Contemporary Art - When? Where? By Whom? For Whom? Why? How?,” Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki (2023), “Xenia: Crossroads in Portrait Painting,” Marianne Boesky Gallery - Chelsea, New York (2020), “Ways of Seeing,” Waltham Forest, London Borough of Culture (2019) and the Government Art Collection, London (2019), “Known Unknowns,” Saatchi Gallery, London (2018) and “Pink Density,” Clovis XV, Brussels (2016). Her works are in the collections of National Museum of Art, Osaka (Osaka), Yokohama Museum of Art (Yokohama, long-term loan), Saatchi Collection (London), Long Museum (Shanghai), Longlati Foundation (Shanghai) and AmC Collezione Coppola (Venice).