Claire Foxton
Claire Foxton
2022 Artist
ARTIST STATEMENT
Griffith is a major regional city located within the Riverina of NSW and known as one of the most productive agricultural regions in Australia. The area produces 70% of all citrus fruit grown in NSW. It also has interesting cultural underpinnings, with 60% of its population having Italian heritage due to an influx of Italian migrant farmers in the early 1900s. It felt fitting to pay homage to these two facts in my mural.
I really enjoyed using a very Mediterranean palette and painting some patterns you might find in Nonna’s kitchen! Overall I wanted the wall to feel like a top-down view (somewhat abstracted) of a table wrapping around the building. So it’s kind of best viewed from the corner. It was also the first time tackling a full-colour rendering of an object on a large scale (I usually paint realistic elements in 2 colours, or focus solely on shadows & highlights). I’ve been wanting to challenge myself for a while and figured the oranges, in their simplicity, were good low-hanging fruit Fun fact! I met the building owner on day one, who hadn’t seen my design and who I didn’t know anything about. Turns out he’s the owner of a Griffith-based juice company (and Italian, of course). Thanks Tony.
The building was originally used as a backyard soft-drink bottling factory behind Pritchard’s General Store. I’m not sure of its age, but it endearingly (and frustratingly) crumbled away as I painted it. I did my best to give in to its charm and accept that the texture is a part of its story. On arrival, I decided to leave a small section of the brickwork visible (see the section to the right of plate) to honour its history.
CLAIRE FOXTON @claire_foxton
Claire Foxton is an emerging Australian artist, muralist, and designer. Claire’s art practice explores the apex of visual design, fine art, and street art through a hybrid of figurative and abstract works using traditional and improvised techniques. With a mix of self-taught and formal education, Claire has established a unique style centered around the photorealistic subject matter, colour, shape, form, and texture.