British artist Francesca Mollett is known for her intensely coloured abstract paintings that depict reflections and reactions of light on surface, and explore the intricacies of liminal space.
Read MoreUsing abstraction as a tool to investigate surface, Mollet's paintings are deeply textured and process focused. Primarily working with oil paint, acrylic and charcoal, Mollett works on calico canvas to create a multitude of layers in her compositions.
Mollett lives and works in London, UK.
Mollett was born in 1991 in Bristol, UK.
In 2014, Mollett graduated from Wimbledon College of Arts in London with a BA in painting. Shortly after, she continued her studies at the Royal Drawing School in London in 2015. While there, Mollett developed an interest in abstract painting and began to make non-representational work that explored different ways of mark making.
Between 2018 and 2020, Mollett studied for a master's degree in painting at the Royal College of Art in London. During this time, she made paintings employing various media, including watercolours, charcoal, acrylic paint and oil paint. Light became a continual source of inspiration for Mollett. Her fascination with the different ways light could react or shatter on a surface encouraged her to make artwork that reflected these luminous abstractions.
Mollett's style is characterised by her use of vivid colours and thick impasto. An unusual use of painterly techniques and iridescent pigments offer a shifting quality to the work. What the viewer perhaps initially perceived as something familiar and known, dissolves into a new and abstract space. Working on calico – a heavy, plain-woven textile which maintains the texture and weight of paint – Mollett's fluid brushwork functions to create intricate reinterpretations of our surface surroundings.
Mollett usually begins her paintings from what she refers to as 'under-drawings'. First, she draws a base for her composition using charcoal on canvas. Then, working directly on the floor, Mollett builds up several layers of paint on the canvas by using a pallet knife or paintbrush to manipulate the paint into swathes of rich and heavy texture.
In her painting Shapes of Steam (2022), Mollett envelops the canvas with luminous facets of pastel blues, pinks and greens. While smears of oil and acrylic paint give the work friction, the corporeal brushstrokes and bold mark making lend the painting a fluidity of form.
Concerned with the ways in which the surface of a painting can represent a symbolic space for contemplation – perhaps recalling memories or evoking anticipation – Mollett's composition encapsulates an environment that draws on the brilliance and luminosity of real life.
In the artist's own words, 'I'm absorbed by how paint acts on a surface. An experience of surface can be an experience of recognition, a drive to access inner reality, a place from which to share connective joy'.
In 2020, Mollett was awarded the Aidan Threlfall Award for Young Painters.
Francesca Mollett has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions.
Selected exhibitions include: The Kingfisher's Wing, GRIMM Gallery, New York (2022); The Moth in the Moss, Taymour Grahne Projects, London (2022); Spiral Walking, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Ode to Orlando, Pi Artworks, London (2022); Down in Albion, L.U.P.O., Lorenzelli Projects, Milan (2021); Le coeur encore, The Approach, London (2021); The Artist's Oracle, White Crypt, London (2021); UK Deep Cut, Asylum Chapel, London (2021); London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (2020); 50/50, FOLD Gallery, London (2020); Sympathetic Magic, Zona Mista, London (2019); Dust sheet embroidered snow, Project Gallery, Arundel (2019).
Francesca Mollett is represented by GRIMM Gallery in London, New York and Amsterdam.
Mollett's website can be found here and her Instagram can be found here.
Phoebe Bradford | Ocula | 2023
