About | The Frances

This gallery has chosen a few select shows to cover 30 years of work by the visual artist Frankie.

Frankie was brought up in a large religious fundamentalist family on a farm near Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. She could draw with photographic accuracy from a very young age and spent many hours in the Kingdom Hall sketching her ideas of what Li’L Abner would do in Paradise.

Her teenage years were chaotic - she had a major illness, her mother died, and she was excommunicated by the Jehovah's Witnesses. During this time, she moved between Canada, Mexico, and California, living for a time with her aunt, but she never stopped drawing, painting, and sculpting. Not having had any formal training, her early works were figurative and realistic, albeit bold and engaging. as her thinking about art and its relationship with humanity evolved, she developed a more symbolic style, although she has always believed that art relates to and reflects societies and social situations in which it is created.

She felt she needed a more theoretical grounding, so put herself through the Alberta University of the Arts (ACAD) and the University of Calgary, graduating in 1996 with a BFA. This stimulated a re-evaluation of her approach and a new beginning.

Her work often celebrates what it is to be human, and the everyday struggles life brings with it.

Frankie’s work is found in many private collections worldwide.