Direct work en plein air is central to Frances’ site-responsive practice. She collaborates with the places she choses to work in- often timing visits to catch moonrise, dawn, a passing storm, flood tides… she takes little art kit with her apart from water based pigments, and works as far as possible with what the landscape provides. Her studio has moved to Weymouth, Dorset- behind the Chesil Beach- and it is Portland Harbour that sits in front of her. She touches base with the sea every morning.

‘Place provides pigment and tools. Weather, tide and season animate, reveal and conceal. I document collect, participate, play. Materials shift hourly, daily, yearly and over millennia. Site materials enter and inhabit the work: each piece is particular and provisional. Cellophane sits with the Cenozoic.’

Frances is a writer, curator, collaborator, art educator. Her first publication documented a trip to Antarctica and her most recent, The Common Ground was published by The Crafts Study Centre UCA in Farnham in 2019. She studied at Aberystwyth UCW, Wimbledon School of Art and Goldsmiths’ College- throughout all her life, her love of landscape has remained at the heart of her career and practice. Frances’ awards include The Shenzhen International Watercolour Biennial Prize at The Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours exhibition: 2016. Collections include Guernsey Museum & Art Gallery and The Edward James Foundation. She is a senior tutor at West Dean College.