Fleur Yorston

Fleur Yorston

Fleur Yorston studied sculpture at art school and exhibits now as a painter, but jewellery remains her abiding passion. As a teenager in Auckland, she learnt to work with copper at night school with Andrea Daly and began to string together her beachcombing treasures of driftwood, paua, flax pods and bird bones to make wearable art. The viability of these skills was tested by three years at art school in Dunedin in the early 1990s where she sold her shell earrings and pendants to fellow students while completing a major in sculpture.

After years travelling and working in Australia, Britain, Ireland and Thailand, Yorston returned to Dunedin to refine her painting in the light of her cultural experiences.

Hints of charms and bracelets can be seen in many of Fleur’s paintings as, rather than separating her love of jewellery from her art, she has often made one the subject of the other. Still characterised by her trademark ‘aged look’ sepia tones and worked surfaces underneath, her paintings have become adorned with silver and gold. Jewellery’s materials and forms are now motif and metaphor in her paintings.

Artwork

Examples of Fleur’s work can be viewed at Mobile Art Gallery in Mt Eden.