Frances Martin
Frances Martin is a painter and printmaker, working in a variety of media, often with figurative subjects, and creating a narrative. She especially likes the opportunities that experimenting with mixed media can bring; a freedom with materials and mark making.
The kindness of women is an ongoing series, with sets of two women interacting, one with an older and a younger woman, another with one of the women pregnant, both carrying a sense of care and warmth between the two.
Frances works from a round tower studio in the medieval church of St Etheldreda's on King Street, Norwich. She has a degree in Fine Art from Wolverhampton and a PGCE from Greenwich University, and her work is held in private and public collections including University College London and Barnet Borough Council.
Artist Statement
The current subject of my work is to portray the figure.
My work is based on my perceptions, with a focus on form and contrast. I love the immediacy of working from life, capturing the essence of the body's form using gestural mark-making; working with black ink on wet paper, which can have a rhythm and speed for creating, also the dark, bare starkness of compressed charcoal. I aim to give a sense of the person as subject, and also my own state of mind, whether positive or negative at that moment.
Previous works have been more concerned with colour, finding harmony within my choice of subject matter, figurative or abstract.