‘Fiona Rae’s practice is characterised by painterly marks and graphic signs executed with a virtuoso range of techniques on block coloured backgrounds of indeterminate depth. ‘Predator’ is part of a series of ‘black’ paintings executed by Rae in the late 90s - which was the subject of a recent exhibition at the Buchmann Galerie, Berlin 2022. All eight of the canvases belonging to such a series contrast a black ground of rolled acrylic with brightly coloured markings, for a sparer, more balanced composition than her earlier works. ‘Predator’ expresses early signs of what would develop into Rae’s freely expressive movement across a canvas.

Playing between geometric shapes and gestural abstraction, Rae skillfully combines variously sized brush work and painterly marks. Rectangles of block colours project horizontally towards the centre of the canvas, partly covered in gestural streaks made using a brush loaded with more than one paint colour. On these geometrical forms, Rae superimposes biomorphic elements executed with a mixture of acrylic and oil paint: air-brushed clouds of black and a series of polychrome squiggles and smudges. Fiona Rae’s artworks blur the boundary between abstraction and figuration. For instance one can almost discern a male face in the top right corner, and the figure of a lion on the left.

Rae studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College London and took part in the seminal exhibition Freeze (1988) organised by Damien Hirst in London’s Docklands. The show marked the beginning of the YBAs rise to prominence. In 1991 Rae was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and in 2011 was appointed a Royal Academician at the Royal Academy of Art. Rae’s artwork is in the permanent collections of the Royal Academy of Art (London), the Tate (London), the Albertina Collection (Vienna), the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), and the US National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C.), among others.