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.