meet Francesca

My work lives in the in-between: between myth and memory, seduction and unease, clarity, and blur. My work circles around the ways women are idolized, feared, romanticized, misread, and how those ideas seep into our bodies across time. 

Each painting is built through layers of found wood, oil paint, and beeswax, existing in a state of partial concealment. 

The wax is a boundary between viewer and painting, allowing the moment to be half-hidden, and semi-avoidant. Wax carries memory, records touch, softens edges, suspends time. Each layer preserves its predecessor, echoing the construction of femininity through accumulation: desire, protection, violence, performance, and resilience all existing as one.

I’m interested in the distance between being seen and known, how voyeurism and intimacy can appear identical from the outside, and how femininity is shaped by that ambiguity.

I’m preoccupied with what paint can do when it misbehaves. I layer, scrape, glaze, blur, and interrupt, letting surfaces hold contradictions. I source from found images, and shoot 35mm film. I distort, skew, and crop reference photos to accomplish unease. I value the use of color in off-putting senses – intense reds and greens – while playing with blaring highlights. 

A figure may consume space confidently, yet dissolve at the edges. A gesture freezes, but feels like it may slip away in a blink. I use blur like a verb: it slows the eye, distorts memory, and asks whether we’re seeing clearly or merely projecting.