About Fran
After a long career in the Arts, Fran returned to painting in 2020. Based on the North Cornwall coast, she now works full time as an artist from her studio in her garden.
She studied at Newlyn School of Art.
Fran's work is mainly abstract and semi abstract. She works in a variety of mediums including acrylic, oil and cold wax, and ink. She often uses collage in her work, incorporating small pieces of sheet music, poetry or her own monotype papers to add interest and surprise. Her surfaces are canvas, wooden panels and paper and she enjoys exploring the effects of different media on these supports.
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Fran works intuitively as an emotional response to the light, colours and shapes of the landscape. Her palette is often bold, inspired not only by her local environment but also by the sensory experience of her travels in India, Nepal and North Africa.
She regularly uses sketchbooks as a starting point, creating a series of small spontaneous images by making marks on the paper with pencil, charcoal, ink sticks or pastels, then adding layers of paint and ink. These can form the basis for a larger work or, when using a concertina sketchbook, this can become the work itself.
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Her process starts with putting down marks on the blank support before adding texture with sand, marble dust, pumice powder, tissue paper or aluminium foil. She then starts to build layers of paint, scraping back in areas to reveal the history of the painting. She adds more marks or paint drips and often adds oil pastel in places over acrylic paint. She creates freedom, movement and visual texture in her work by using a variety of tools to apply the paint: brushes, scrapers, sticks, scrunched up paper, bubble wrap, stencils and her hands.
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All works shown in the Gallery are available to buy. For more information on commissioning a painting from Fran, please get in touch directly using the email address below.
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Studio open by arrangement.
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