Francesca Owen
Francesca Owen is an award-winning contemporary fine art painter and is a
former Slade graduate, living in West Penwith, Cornwall, close to St Ives.
Francesca has had her paintings successfully submitted to the Hampstead
Arts Society Summer Competition, she was selected out of over 900
applicants, and work selected at the New English Art Club in London. Her
paintings have also been spotted in Tatler magazine and selected in, ‘the
Artist curates’, section. In the Autumn and Spring time she is represented at
the Affordable Art Fair and her worked has been displayed on the Kings Road
in central London.
It was her residency at Tremenheere Sculpture Park which had the greatest
impact on her, spending a whole year painting in the garden culminated in the
solo show, ‘The Triumph of Love’. Since then other projects and solo shows
such as ‘Sacred Garden’, have been opportunities to work on a series of
themes around gardens. Cornish gardens in particular, fuel the imagination as
a starting point and paintings can then continue to be loaded with figures,
flowers stories and techniques inspired by neo-Impressionism.
‘I am deeply moved by Impressionism, fascinated by movement, brush marks
and how colours dance when placed next to each other on the canvas.
Anything is possible on the canvas, and that is why I paint. When we delve
deep into the notion and romance of gardens and figures, we can find it all.’
Over her whole life Francesca has always painted, ‘I suppose I’ve always
painted. In some way or another painting has always been in my life, I was
brought up with strange props for my mother’s display work and they were in
every room in our house. Things like flowers, puppets, mannequins with
missing arms and legs, and a lot of old junk that my mother used in her
display work, she made us help out a lot so we had to paint on canvas and
board, we had to paint shop and forest scenes, or paint old furniture for the
displays and so these were in our families everyday life and when I was
young and that influenced me a great deal… ’
These types of journeys continue to deepen Francesca’s experience of life
and a lot of time is spent in the studio or in gardens and travels where stories
are thought up and developed in this way into paintings.
Gardens tell us things about ourselves, signifying a time of year when certain
species bloom triggers memories for us. This is how Francesca directly
represents Cornwall in her paintings and because her studio is situated
directly in a Cornish garden, naturally this work. It is the love of painting and
the very stuff of the paint itself which is of pure and upmost excitement and
importance.