Blackbird Rook presents
Slips of Yew
FELICITAS AGA
5 December - 14 January 2025
The TCHC Viewing Room gallery, GU34 3YU
Artist’s Reception Saturday 11th January
Felicitas Aga’s work is rooted in the landscapes and traditions of her upbringing but speaks to broader, more elusive themes: ritual, light and the absurd. Born in Sweden, Aga grew up in Norway, Appalachia, and a medieval town in Germany - always surrounded by mountains and forest. These landscapes form a vital part of her visual language, while her interest in Catholicism - more aesthetic than spiritual - infuses her work with a sense of ceremony and layered symbolism.
The use of stencils is a defining characteristic of Aga’s work. Derived from large charcoal drawings - “generous, often done in one charcoaly lunge”—these stencils bring structure to her otherwise fluid process. They demand decisiveness in her initial designs but allow freedom for experimentation with colour and surface. “I take liberties with linear perspective,” she notes, “which, I hope, invigorates the compositional choices.” This interplay of precision and spontaneity gives her paintings a sense of controlled energy, where every edge and hue feels considered yet alive.
Colour is a narrative force in Aga’s work. Inspired by moments of quiet observation - a scatter of red twigs on a pale green table, the silhouette of branches against a fading sky - her palette combines luminosity with discord, often evoking landscapes both real and imagined. The shifting light and dramatic contrasts of her Nordic upbringing, the brooding atmospheres of her early surroundings, lend the work a tonal complexity.
Aga’s upbringing in a liberal Catholic household shaped her fascination with the aesthetic and forensic aspects of ritual. Her paintings, with their layered compositions, reflect this fascination, functioning as “offerings” - intensely personal yet deliberately open-ended. Symbols like moths, branches, or clusters of fruit recur, shift in meaning. These elements are not illustrative but atmospheric, inviting viewers to lose themselves in the work’s textures and ambiguities.
Storytelling underpins Aga’s creative process. A devoted reader, she draws inspiration from literature, particularly the works of Nabokov, whose themes of exile, wonder, and the minutiae of life resonate in her art. Her layered compositions often resemble visual palimpsests, revealing fragments of memory and whispers of narrative. Aga describes her paintings as shaped by the rhythms of poetry. “Words swim into focus and recede again,” she explains, reflecting a practice that embraces fluidity, transformation, and the intangible. The layered surfaces of her work mirror the layered process of thought, where ideas, memories, and images intersect to create something both deeply felt and universally resonant.
Felicitas Aga recieved her MA in Fine Art Painting from Chelsea School of Art and Design in 1996. Previously she studied with Per Kirkeby at Städelschule in Frankfurt, with Bruce McLean at the Slade in London and at Vestlandets Kunstakademi in Bergen, Norway. Aga holds the title Meisterschülerin of Per Kirkeby. She currently lives in Germany and England.