Frances Hatch ARWS Gives a talk: H O P E : Coming to our senses on Friday 28 July 7pm
As part of the HOPE group show at Sladers Yard Gallery in West Bay, environmental painter Frances Hatch will give a talk about her work, her techniques and the connection they give her to the places she paints.
All the artists in this exhibition share a deep sense of connection to nature. Frances Hatch finds wild places where she feels moved to paint. She makes her work out of materials she finds there at that time, mixing natural pigments and textures with paint and found materials. Her paintings are joyous gatherings of the light, the weather and the feeling of being in that wildness at that particular moment.
FRANCES HATCH works en plein air from her studio base in Dorset. Her reflective practice seeks ever deepening relatedness to any land with which she engages. Dorset has been her home for over thirty years but she grew up in the Fens near Ely at the edge of The Wash. Its flat black earth shaped the fundamentals of her practice: she has always loved to paint outdoors. She meets all land with open curiosity. The paintings selected in this show bring together newly discovered and familiar places.
Frances choses to work with water-based media, integrating colour (gouache, acrylic or watercolour) with what is available in the landscape. This might be earth pigments foraged on site or a fragment of human-generated debris. By using water as the means of transport for her pigments she invites precipitation, humidity, temperature and breeze to play their part in the evolving works.
‘When control is relinquished, magic can happen’. Frances Hatch
Frances studied visual art at Aberystwyth University College of Wales, L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, Nantes, Goldsmiths’ College and has an MA in printmaking from Wimbledon College of Art. She was a senior tutor at West Dean College from 1995 – 2022. In 2005 a Research Bursary from DVA/ExLab supported her study of the history and craft of making and consolidating pigments. Frances has published books about her projects and has also contributed to a number of other books both as an illustrator and practitioner.
Frances has exhibited widely throughout the UK including repeatedly in highly regarded competitive London group exhibitions including the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, the Works on Paper Fair, The Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (RI), the Ing Discerning Eye Exhibition at the Mall Galleries, and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
In 2016, Frances was awarded the Shenzhen International Watercolour Biennial Prize at the RI exhibition at the Mall Galleries. This is ‘an award to encourage innovation and experimentation in contemporary watermedia.’
In 2020 she curated a show of her paintings with ceramics by world-class potters entitled The Common Ground at the Crafts Study Centre, University College for the Arts, Farnham. She was elected to the Royal Watercolour Society in 2022 (ARWS). She was awarded Abbotsbury Landscape Artist of the Year 2023. Frances has shown regularly at Sladers Yard since 2015.
Frances is exhibiting her paintings with those of Rachel Fenner ARCA, Adela Powell ceramics, Caroline Sharp woven sculpture and Petter Southall furniture in Hope, which continues until 2 September.
- H O P E : Coming to our senses on Friday 28 July 7pm
- (Doors 6pm. Hot food & full bar available before)
- Tickets: £10 Please call 01308 459511
Sladers Yard Gallery and Café Sladers are open Wednesday to Saturday 10am – 4.30pm. Café Sladers is also open on Sundays 10am – 3.30pm. All exhibitions can be viewed online at sladersyard.co.uk. Tickets and enquiries please call 01308 459511.
