Francesca Owen is a British contemporary fine art painter based in Cornwall in the U.K.
“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’d begin a new painting and enjoy the feeling of the colours gliding on the surface of the canvas- a world of possibilities. It was the theme of gardens, figures, flowers and they would make their appearance. After a while I would turn to the Impressionists books or older paintings I had made for reference to look for more colour or stories unresolved.
It means a lot to be a women painter, to follow the footsteps of female painters. Throughout history, art was male dominated but women painters found a way through. What does it mean to be a female artist painting gardens, flowers and the figure?
In Cornwall it meant a lot to be a painter of such things- to break away from the tradition of plain air painting and seascapes. I loved these too and I knew them well. I never understood why artists lost focus on our historic and rich garden culture. Our unique micro climate enabled us to house and protect some very rare species of flowers and trees dating back to the Victorian times of the famous plant hunters.
I have always enjoyed the heaviness in the body of paint itself. Making it almost sculptural in application and layers I had been told must have been an influence from a tutor called Phyllida Barlow RA MBE- her warmth and energy to drive me was unforgettable and until his death, the head of painting, then was Andrew Stahl, we often talked about new works and shows until last year. I had two scholarships and had won two awards then.
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 are symbols of 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 and because that’s how we see the world.
The form was fascinating, heart shaped dewy leaves, the circles of flowers, the act of remembering them from the spring and summer just gone, how the light fell from the sky and through the trees to light up the delicate flesh of the petals.
There was not much point in painting from life as there was no garden that existed in this world that I was painting- it was the feeling and the symbolism that I was after. Something that would leave you and the viewer with a sense of the magical place or of the respite that you may be seeking.
The paintings may seem ornamental at first glance, this is the point of them, to covey a beauty and a mastering of paint was the intention. Under the surface is the veil of time, I hope. Of us turning and changing seasons like the flowers, of us growing towards the light, of us wilting gloriously I hope, with time. While we get on each day the world turns as does the garden we are in or we use to find a solace in the world…
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 and into this world."
Francesca Owen is an award-winning painter. A former student and recipient of two scholarships at the Slade School of Fine Art, including the Euan Uglow memorial scholarship. Francesca Owen's paintings are now held with collectors and galleries across the U.K, Europe and America.