Genieve Figgis is an Irish artist who started her artistic career using social media. She is known for her vibrant colors and ghoulish or macabre imagery. According to an article in Flaunt magazine: "Her unique brand of painting—which uses acrylics “slathered heavily” on canvas and often references works of the canon as viewed through a melted macabre filter—is at once classical and utterly contemporary."
Figgis' use of Twitter to display her artwork in 2014 caught the attention of American artist Richard Prince and introduced Figgis into the New York art scene. Olivia Parkes writes "An unconventional rising art star, she started her family before she started art school, and received recognition for her work online before the gallery world caught up. It's the kind of story that makes you love the internet: for bringing us the good stuff, faster than we would have gotten it otherwise." Figgis made her American debut exhibition at Harpers Books in East Hampton, New Yorkin the summer of 2014 while also publishing her first book at the same time titled Making Love With the Devil. Since 2015, she is represented by Almine Rech Gallery. From the outset, Figgis has played with the culture of upper class luxury culture portrayed in the art canon by artists such as Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, Fragonard, Édouard Manet, James Ensor and François Boucher. Her paintings reinvent the idyllic romantic scenes of lavish playfulness with a dark humour creating scenes of profanity and horror.
Style
Figgis' style strikes a balance between figuration and abstraction. Her paintings are reminiscent of 18th century Rococo style as she recreates cheery Victorian photographs, and paintings with thick paint, causing the subjects to appear as melting, zombie-like creatures. Figgis values the use of paint for its ability to surprise, and is the medium she uses to form her figures of drips and swirls giving them a ghoulish imagery in her paintings. Her paintings technique involves dripping paint onto a canvas allowing gravity and colour-bleeding along to do most of the work with subtle surface marks to create specific details and textures. Her work has been influenced by growing up in Ireland with the rules of the Catholic Church and the scenic countryside she is surrounded by in her everyday life, living in County Wicklow. Figgis believes having a knowledge of a Spirit and becoming one with nature allows one to become more connected with the Earth's energy. This expression of spiritual beliefs can be seen through her works with her use of rich colors that "bubble, ooze and marbleize as if alive."
