Mark Francis (born 1962) is a Northern Irish painter living and working in London, England.
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Mark Francis (born 1962) is a Northern Irish painter living and working in London, England.
Francis was born in Newtownards, Northern Ireland and studied painting at St. Martin's School of Art (1980–85) before going on to the Chelsea School of Art where he completed his Master of Arts in painting in 1986. Francis has exhibited internationally [1] both individually and in group exhibitions. Indeed, his "practice over the past thirty years has focused on making paintings with singular optical intensity — powerful, apparently abstract combinations of concentrated patterning and stark colour contrasts." [2] As an emerging artist in 1995, Francis was involved in The Adventure of Painting [3] at Kunstverein Düsseldorf/Stuttgart, Germany and From Here at the Karsten Schubert/Waddington Galleries [4] in London. These shows were pivotal in questioning the role of contemporary painting both in Europe and the UK which consequently led Francis to show in prestigious exhibitions such as IMMA Glenn Dimplex Award exhibition Irish Museum of Modern Art (1996), Absolute Vision; New British Painting in the 1990s Museum of Modern Art Oxford (1996) [5] and the infamous Sensation Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection exhibition (1997). By the year 2000, Francis was invited to exhibit an early career overview Elements at Milton Keynes Gallery. [6]
Over the last thirty years, Francis' work has had a strong association with science. Throughout his career, his abstract paintings have continually been informed by the shapes, patterns and visual qualities found by his personal interest in mycology. [7] It is through this abstract language that Francis initiated his platform in the early 1990s to become one of the UK's leading contemporary painters and maintains to be at the forefront of critical evaluation within art shown in publications such as Painting Today. [8]
Francis is often characterised by his wet-on-wet painting technique (a technique also used by Gerhard Richter in the 1960s) and his continuous use of grid formations [9] that are present within his paintings. [10] Francis explores the notion of chaos and order through the idea of mapping and how seemingly chaotic and random formations can have a larger, almost incomprehensible working logic. He has moved his research from micro to macro with particular interest in astronomical formations [11] using the process and concept of mapping to combine, connect, mark, relate and explore. [12]
More recently in 2008, Francis' work in Pulse [13] Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane marked a crucial move into his work being shown in a public space in a solo exhibition and has continued to show in the public domain with Arena at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal in 2010.
Francis' work is collected by numerous institutions and organisations that include the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Tate and is represented by Kerlin Gallery,Bernhard Knaus Fine Art and Fox Jensen Sydney and Fox Jensen McCrory, Auckland.
Louis le BrocquyHRHA was an Irish painter born in Dublin to Albert and Sybil le Brocquy. Louis' sister is the sculptor Melanie Le Brocquy. His work received many accolades in a career that spanned some seventy years of creative practice. In 1956, he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale, winning the Premio Acquisito Internationale with A Family, subsequently included in the historic exhibition Fifty Years of Modern Art Brussels, World Fair 1958. The same year he married the Irish painter Anne Madden and left London to work in the French Midi.
Anne Madden is an English-born painter, who is well known in both Ireland and France where she has divided her time since her marriage to Louis le Brocquy in 1958.
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The National Gallery of Ireland houses the national collection of Irish and European art. It is located in the centre of Dublin with one entrance on Merrion Square, beside Leinster House, and another on Clare Street. It was founded in 1854 and opened its doors ten years later. The gallery has an extensive, representative collection of Irish paintings and is also notable for its Italian Baroque and Dutch masters painting. The current director is Caroline Campbell.
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Elizabeth Magill is an Irish painter. She studied at the Belfast College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, and now lives and works in London.
Abbot Hall Art Gallery is an art gallery in Kendal, England. Abbot Hall was built in 1759 by Colonel George Wilson, the second son of Daniel Wilson of Dallam Tower, a large house and country estate nearby. It was built on the site of the old Abbot's Hall, roughly where the museum is today. Before the Dissolution of the Monasteries this was where the Abbot or his representative would stay when visiting from the mother house of St Mary's Abbey, York. The architect is unknown. During the early twentieth century the Grade I listed building was dilapidated and has been restored as an art gallery.
Deborah Brown was a Northern Irish sculptor. She is well known in Ireland for her pioneering exploration of the medium of fibre glass in the 1960s and established herself as one of the country's leading sculptors, achieving extensive international acclaim.
Patrick Anthony Hennessy RHA was an Irish realist painter. He was known for his highly finished still lifes, landscapes and trompe l'oeil paintings. The hallmark of his style was his carefully observed realism and his highly finished surfaces, the result of a virtuoso painting technique. He was brought up in Arbroath by his mother and step-father, his father having been killed during World War One. He attended Dundee School of Art where he met his lifelong companion, the painter Henry (Harry) Robertson Craig. Two of his paintings were accepted in 1939 at the Royal Scottish Academy for their Annual Exhibition. For the next 29 years he lived in Ireland with extended trips abroad. He was elected a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1949. The Hendriks Gallery in Dublin and the Guildhall Galleries in Chicago were the main outlets for his work. In the late 1960s he moved permanently to Tangier and then, after suffering ill health, to the Algarve. He died in London.
Hughie O'Donoghue is a British painter.
Richard Vernon Francis Cook is a British painter living and working in Newlyn, Cornwall. Cook has been exhibiting for over twenty five years and has received awards from the British Council and the Arts Council. In 2001 he was given a solo show at Tate St Ives, with a related publication, and a major painting was acquired for the collection in 2006. Further works are held in the British Museum collection.
William McKeown was a Northern Irish painter, watercolourist, and draughtsman.
Mary Swanzy HRHA was an Irish landscape and genre artist. Noted for her eclectic style, she painted in many styles including cubism, futurism, fauvism, and orphism, she was one of Ireland's first abstract painters.
Ellen Maria Duncan was an Irish art gallery director and critic. She was the first curator of the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin, now known as the Hugh Lane Gallery.
Richard Orpen was an Irish architect, painter, illustrator and designer.
Barbara Dawson is an Irish author, editor, art historian, gallery director, and curator. She is curator of several art exhibitions including the works of notable artists such as Francis Bacon (2009).
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