'Dreams of gardens, flowers, figures all come into existence in my world of painting. Gardens are a kind of utopia, a place of memory, love and healing. Flowers symbolise different parts of ourselves that we want to hold onto or forget...'
Francesca Owen is a British contemporary fine art painter, based in Cornwall. Her paintings often focus on elements of natural landscapes, figural and abstract, conveyed through the use of dense, textual strokes. An award-winning artist, Owen was the recipient of two scholarships at the Slade School of Fine Art, including the prestigious Euan Uglow memorial scholarship. Today, Owen's paintings are held throughout Europe and America, in both public galleries and private collections.
On her proccess, Owen writes:
'Some of my most favourite days are ‘nothing days.’ These are the days when a storm is raging, and no one is outside. These are the days when the mind is most clear for painting.
I begin a new painting and enjoy the feeling of the colours gliding on the surface of the canvas - a world of possibilities, and it could go any which way. I think of gardens, figures, flowers, and they appear.After a while, I often turn to the Impressionists books, or maybe older paintings I had made for reference, looking for more colour inspiration, or unresolved stories.
Looking back was looking forwards, and space on ‘nothing days’ was when this came. I’d think of what my tutors said at Slade when I had just started art school. A younger me still fixated on themes of nature and travel, figures and gardens. Colour, then, seemed somewhat aggressive, as I had less experience. Now, I look for a softer, but still strong, approach.
I have always enjoyed the heaviness in the body of paint itself. Making it almost sculptural in application, in layers I had been told must have been an influence from a tutor called Phyllida Barlow - her unforgettable warmth and energy drove me, inspired me. I feel her loss, even now.
Until his death, the head of painting was Andrew Stahl. We often talked about new works and shows I was doing. I had two scholarships and had won awards by this time, which helped me to buy canvases and materials, and to travel.
Dreams of gardens, flowers, figures all come into existence in my world of painting. Gardens are a kind of utopia, a place of memory, love and healing. Flowers symbolise different parts of ourselves that we want to hold onto or forget; the figure is there because it’s you, and you’re seeing the work and being in it because that’s how you see the world. As I am painting, all these things just appear in their own way.
The bottom line for my work is to convey love, beauty, nature and all of this must be included and balanced, but out of balance, in order for me to make a painting, and to feel that it is conclusive and that it is finished, or that it has arrived from somewhere else, brought into this world.'