Turner Prize 1991 artists: Fiona Rae

Rae makes highly coloured, vivid abstract paintings that draw on and develop a variety of formal, painterly motifs. Common to all her work is the self-conscious juxtaposition of flat areas of colour with dragged, daubed or scumbled paint marks. Although her compositions can appear accidental, almost arbitrary, close inspection reveals a highly controlled handling of paint and style and a tight underlying structure. As her work developed throughout the 1990s it became still more structured, and focused in a more condensed manner on certain motifs. Untitled (Parliament) (oil and acrylic on canvas, 2.74×2.44 m, 1996; London, Saatchi Gal.) presents varied target motifs, perhaps referring to paintings made in the early 1960s by Kenneth Noland, floating in a furious field of black and white. The stillness and formal calm of the circles plays off the chaos of their surround, an instance of the strongly antithetical juxtapositions that Rae often employs.