14 Facts About Jacqueline Fahey

Jacqueline Mary Fahey was born on 1929 and is a New Zealand painter and writer.

Jacqueline Fahey had strong female role models in her life: her mother was a pianist who attended the Melbourne Conservatoire of Music and worked as a professional pianist for 8 years before returning to New Zealand, and her grandmother taught at a Dominican Convent and was "very good at languages and loved history".

Jacqueline Fahey then studied at the Canterbury University College School of Art, graduating with a Diploma of Fine Arts in 1952.

Jacqueline Fahey was taught by Russell Clark, Bill Sutton, and Colin Lovell-Smith.

In 1951, Jacqueline Fahey moved to Wellington and in 1956 she married Fraser McDonald, a young psychiatrist who she met at a party at her flat in Wellington.

Jacqueline Fahey has written two memoirs about her life: Something for the Birds and Before I Forget.

In 1964, Jacqueline Fahey organised an exhibition with artist Rita Angus at the Centre Gallery in Wellington.

In 1980, Jacqueline Fahey was awarded a QEII Arts Council Award to travel to New York and study painting.

Specifically, Jacqueline Fahey wanted to "find out what circumstances helped women artists to survive in a male-dominated profession in New York".

Jacqueline Fahey's work increased in prominence in the 1980s, through galleries such as the Women's Gallery, established in Wellington in 1980, which sought to provide exposure to women's art and question the often patriarchal structures of the art world and market.

Jacqueline Fahey was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to art, in the 1997 New Year Honours.

Jacqueline Fahey is credited as being one of the first painters in New Zealand to paint from a female perspective and examine the domestic subjects of contemporary women's existence: children, the home, marriage, community life, and relationships.

Jacqueline Fahey often uses an impasto style of painting, where the paint is applied thickly and her brushstrokes are clearly evident to the viewer.

Jacqueline Fahey never considered moving into abstraction, though she has acknowledged that there are abstract qualities in her work and would often turn her paintings upside down in order to reflect on the balance of colour and composition.