Frances provided us with a fascinating and unique afternoon in which she described her development as an artist and the influence her natural ability as a medium has had on her creative talent. Whilst recuperating from a car accident Frances started to draw animals and this lead to a successful 25 year career as a wildlife artist. Her art then took a very different direction when she started to receive messages from the husband of a friend who had recently passed away. She provided a fascinating description of this experience and how it opened up a whole new artistic channel. It introduced her to an intuitive approach in which she started to create art based on feelings and energies of the soul. She went to the Isbourne Centre and did a course on being a medium to help her to better understand her natural talent in this area.
A short time into her talk Frances handed out paper and pens. She asked everyone to make an image on the paper without consciously trying to draw something. She then continued to describe her journey as an artist.
Frances described how her art changed gradually. Initially she continued to draw animals, but they appeared in different forms and situations. She attended a psychic art workshop learning how to use energy to create works of art. She now does ‘soul portraits’ which she achieves by connecting with the energy of the soul of the sitter and translating these into vibrant ‘living’ pastel portraits. She works with soft pastels on mountboard. The picture is built up in layers starting with a base colour to give it life. Bright colours such as red, orange and yellow symbolise abundance. The subsequent layers then tended to be more muted, with each one having its own meaning.
Frances took a trip to Glastonbury and then spent a year travelling around ancient sacred sites, absorbing the feelings and letting words come into her head. Her intuitive art work is done in the moment, straight onto the canvas with no planning. Her work often involves creating several (sometimes up to 10) images, one on top of the other, until one appears that she is happy with. Her latest work is a series based on trees. Again this involves several layers of acrylic paint and is mainly done with a palette knife.
Another venture was to sit in her conservatory and write short passages. She ended up writing 78 and decided to then do 78 pictures inspired by the words. These were then put together into what she described as ‘oracle cards’. The idea being to think of a question and then pick a card and see what answer it provided.
She has recently been experimenting with acrylic pouring medium. She showed us an example where she had used this to create a painting based on the energy of creation – the big bang. This medium can be used several different ways – see you tube for examples.
For the latter part of her talk Frances asked people to share their drawings with her. These she was able to interpret and discuss their meaning. The whole session gave us a fascinating insight to a very different approach to creating art.
