ABOUT

Working under the moniker Cheeky Observer, Alicia McFadzean is a self-taught contemporary artist raised in Australia, now based in Cape Town.

Alicia works across a variety of media to produce fine art and large scale murals. Public walls are a favourite, given her love of interacting with different communities and finding joy in creating site-specific work to enrich the cultural microcosm therein.

Magical in flavour, Alicia’s art practice is guided heavily by her imagination. She draws inspiration from intangible structures of light, of shadow, geometry and energetic frequency. As someone who is acutely tuned into natural environment and sensitive to the sustainability issues we now face, elements of the natural environment inevitably play a fundamental role in the visual fantasies she strives to create. Feminine energy comes to life through deconstructed plant matter; specific animal spirits are called upon to weave symbolism and the thematic threads of each piece. Often folded into the human form, or laced with a hint of sacred geometry; the overall result presents itself as a colourful dance between realism and abstraction.

‘Something truly beautiful emerges when we layer the real with the abstract. It is comfort, a visual reinforcement that our lived experience has the potential to expand far beyond the three dimensional box that our five senses have constructed for us. The constant tension of having to exist solely in the ‘real’ dissolves, and we are met with a feeling of wholeness.
I want my work to be the vehicle that takes people to this space.’