Mandy Francis
Mandy Francis’s paintings are a simultaneous exploration of ideas around the ‘the underdog’ or overlooked and the process of making. Mandy see’s crazy little wonderful birds or plants as an opportunity to explore and share notions of resilience, humour, and connection. This comes from her longstanding interest in social justice and equality.
At the outset of her creations, Mandy is visually inspired by strong shadows, unusual perspectives, or patterns, often created by one of her plant clippings or the patterns on a crazy little bird in her garden. Mandy will then embark on a journey of exploration with paint, pastels, wire, paper mache, found objects, composition, all of which give birth to new and wonderful characters and stories. The end result is in this way less contrived and evolves on its own out of the process. Mandy’s painting switches between fast and energetic to slow and very careful, siting surrounded with the sculptures/paintings and simultaneously working on a number of canvases, on the birds, on the little masonite platforms, keeping her hands busy all the time. Mandy keeps working in this way until she feels the character of the subjects has fully come alive. Mandy then captures her art making process as an autobiographical still life.
