CECILY SLADE
Feature Artist
Spring 2024
Cecily’s artistic potential was recognised at an early age through the winning of an art prize with her very first painting. Her parents encouraged her by sending her to an art tutor and later she was honoured to receive some training at East Sydney Technical College from the Arts Council in Casino, her childhood home. She studied Level 1 Art and won an Art Scholarship.
Her artistic career began in clothing design. Having parents in the clothing business, Cecily opened a small clothing design factory at 18 and was successful in selling her designs to outlets between Brisbane and Sydney and some in substantial quantities to large wholesalers. Contingent with this she completed a BA in Behavioural Science. Subsequently her entrepreneurial skills led her to work in senior marketing positions for Kellogg’s and Masterfoods in Sydney.
In the 1980’s she moved from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast and opened her own clothing design shops under her label Cecily’s.
In 2004 Cecily returned to art, experimenting with styles and organic forms and particularly leaning towards florals. Since that time, she has honed her artistic expertise in this field working diligently at her practice and developing her own unique methods for creating her floral works.
Flowers offer a vehicle which enable her to express deeper realisations of the human spirit. The intricate beauty and subtle nuances of colour and light and the harmony of line and form they embody are integral to her work.
Cecily works from living flowers and sunlight and aims to breathe life into the work. Also present is a passion for good design as the basic structure on which the work is built. It is meaningful that these organic natural forms have been shown to quieten, uplift and enhance the human condition.
Cecily holds several exhibitions every year and has received acclaim and recognition for her floral works.
This exhibition is on display at Feather and Lawry Gallery, Toowoomba, from Monday 2 September – 10 October 2024.
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Whispers
Oil on canvas
910 x 610 mm
AUD 1800.00
Whispers is filled with quiet luminous space. These poppies have imagined themselves into the most complex of forms,
I just love the majestic otherworldly buds and spent flower heads. This painting has a lovely stillness to it.
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Penelope
Oi on canvas
1020 x 760 mm
AUD 2300.00
Pink peonies are a symbol of good luck and prosperity. My wish is for these luscious pink peonies to bless your home with good luck and prosperity everyday.
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Enfolded Light
Oil on canvas
910 x 760 mm
AUD 1800.00
Oh, seeker of beauty and truth. Dance with freedom through the world’s darkness
Our precious gift
Lead us home
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Charlotte
Oil on canvas
910 x 760 mm
AUD 2250.00
This peony was the most complex of flowers. Ice violet pink and white in colour, moving into intense shades of purple and rose in its depths.
The lacy white petals framing the flower are so intricate it makes for a sumptuous floral confection.
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Blush
Oil on canvas
1015 x 1015 mm
AUD 2750.00
On a lovely autumn day in Toowoomba’s Queens Park this bee was happily buzzing through the dahlia bushes with his mates.
I wanted to recreate the sensuousness of this bloom and the gorgeous patterning of magenta colouring through this otherwise white dahlia gives it its name, Blush.
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Lace
Oil on canvas
760 x 760 mm
AUD 1800.00
I was interested in how the rain had so saturated the petals of this poppy that it reminded me of an antique lace doily.
This is what I have tried to recreate in this painting and why it is called Lace.
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Ruby's Song
Oil on canvas
1020 x 1020 mm
AUD 2750.00
Have you ever noticed that Camelias have the most beautiful shiny leaves that glow silver in the sunlight?
Ruby’s Song is a story about those gorgeous leaves. They draw the eye through the painting and anchor it with two frilly red camelias.
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Portals of Light
Oil on canvas
1000 x 1000 mm
AUD 2400.00
I love finding interesting organic spaces that are unexpectedly beautiful and bound to be missed at a casual glance. These little spaces channel the light through the foliage, creating light patterns and colour transformations. They make spaces for colourful blossoms to peek through and invest translucent leaves with golden glowing light.
I love the richness of the purples through this painting too. These sweet peas were part of The Carnival of Flowers, Toowoomba’s celebration of all things floral and beautiful.
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Flow
Oil on canvas
1015 x 1015 mm
AUD 2750.00
One of the things I love about tulips is how shiny they are.
This painting is called Flow for the beautiful flow of lines through the work and because the flow of life has this bloom just about ready to drop its luscious petals.
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Blossom Heaven
Oil on canvas
1220 x 910 mm
AUD 2900.00
Spring is the happiest of seasons and this painting recreates the feeling of looking up into a flowering peach tree with a little bee sizing up his next blossom to visit.
I hope it helps recreate the happiness of spring in your heart too.
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Flair
Oil on canvas
760 x 760 mm
AUD 1800.00
I love hot pink. To me this beautiful pink peony said excitement with style and panache. That is why I have called it Flair.
My flowers are outdoors in natural light and this increases the range and intensity of colour and I have developed my own techniques to make the light bounce off the canvas. This beautiful peony just glows with intense sunlight.
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Primavera
Oil on canvas
1015 x 760 mm
AUD 1800.00
When you are a frequent visitor to Toowoomba’s Carnival of Flowers one of the things you will appreciate is the often, spectacular colour palate that makes the array of flowers so beautiful. Spring is such an exciting season we can’t help ourselves getting out into the garden, enjoying life bursting forth in abundance.
Primavera is a celebration of the abundance and promise of Spring.
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Luminous
Oil on canvas
910 x 760 mm
AUD 1800.00
It’s a lovely thing when people send you photos of flowers because they love your work. People send me photos from all around the world. The reference photo for this painting came from our Canadian Aunt who took it in a garden in Norway, of course it didn’t look quite like this.
I wanted to make this painting so filled with light and transparent that it’s almost a whisper. It’s like a breath of clean fresh air. It glows with light.
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Flying Pink
Acrylic on canvas
760 x 1020 mm
SOLD -
Empathy
Acrylic on canvas
1020 x 1020 mm
SOLD -
Golden Hour
Acrylic on canvas
760 x 1070 mm
SOLD -
Coconut Ice
Acrylic on canvas
610 x 1520 mm
SOLD
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