A painter on the ground

Frances trained at Aberystwyth University College of Wales, L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, France, Goldsmiths’ College, London and Wimbledon College of Art. She exhibits widely throughout the UK and was awarded the Shenzhen International Watercolour Biennial Prize in 2016, which recognises innovation and experimentation in contemporary water media. She was elected member of The Royal Watercolour Society in 2022 and is represented by Sladers Yard Gallery, Dorset, Kevis House, West Sussex and Bankside Gallery, London.

As a child I painted in watercolour out on the black lands of the Isle of Ely fen. I grew into a plein-air painter simply because it was when I was outside that the mundane became miraculous: a storm moving through a stand of poplars, for example, was an experience I didn’t want to forget. It made me feel different and I wanted to share that feeling.

Frances continues to work outdoors where dust, grit, paws, frost, thaw, hail, gale and rain participate. Supports are softened by rain, chewed by mice, nibbled by snails, trampled by cows, or erased by rain.

Water-based media, resident earths and clays integrate easefully because water is the vehicle of transport in the environment.

Weather is neither good nor bad, it simply is. Land is not too hard or too red, it simply is.

Working with Place

Curiosity remains core, yet the stance has shifted from working in a place to working with Place.

Frances cultivates reciprocity, inviting the commune of the land into conversation: at times quick to respond, at other times reluctant.

The terrain provides pigment, tools that make marks and tools that remove or distress the surface. Places sometimes provide a surface to paint on.

The less I take into a Place in terms of ‘art kit’, the more the land offers.

The works that emerge are containers of a particular experience. Visual praise poems.