Francine Marshall

Loveable colors, painterly imagination, flexibility! These are my heartfelt aims. My realistic subjects are fauna, flora & nature-scapes. And I delight in creating abstracts & fantasies. LOTS of art classes & a 25-year graphic-arts career fashioned the Me-of-Now. In realistic works such as 'Six Dogs' above, the foregrounds are as true as I’m able to paint, while the backgrounds are most-often abstracted.

I have two main Approaches:

#1: Taking many photos & drawing often, I select 2-3 favorites, interweave & alter elements, & transfer the composition to canvas using a grid. A gradual overall development of the painting follows, via 35+ thin layers of oil glazes & colors. Eventually (often months) I feel satisfied with every miniscule element. Finally a sigh of happiness, ahh!

#2: With barely any planning, or following casual drawings, I plunge in fast with acrylics on a variety of surfaces, discovering what evolves naturally. As Barry Stevens said 'Don't push the river, it flows by itself.' The result might be playful or messy & sometimes even passable as 'Art.' This allows for a variant of FLOW, quite different from the laser-beam focus I need for the accurate realism & correct anatomy of Approach #1.

End-of-last, brief doing nothing, while contemplating my next painting’s possibilities. Amongst other choices, our second home in Chitwan Nepal, where we've lived on-and-off for the past 26 years, provides ample inspiration & material.

I participated in Open Studios 2019 & 2021, both for two memorable weekends in October. My Watsonville art studio 'The Paintbox' is 0pen-by-appointment on Fridays between 11am & 9pm. I'll be painting, & visitors are free to roam about this studio-house-garden with 49 artworks on display. These visits are for comraderie & enjoyment, entirely free of pressure.

I look forward to your Friday visit!