Mark Francis Lecture (12/03/2014)

The lecture by painter Mark Francis was interesting because of the subject of his paintings. He said he wanted his work to contain a feel for the things you cannot see, bacteria and the microscopic. I was particularly drawn to one of his analogies about his dot paintings, likening it to a school playground where one is separated from the crowd in an apparently threatening situation; I find it fascinating to think about humanity in this removed way, considering us as 'the human swarm', similar to observing the Earth from the air where huge buildings become tiny facets on the surface of the land.

I also liked Francis' focus on the broken down grid, the balance between order and chaos. I did wonder how I hadn't looked into his works much before because I spent my GCSE and A Level projects looking at broken down grids and structural, architectural decay. I find there is something really beautiful and melancholy about this motif, it shows the gentle but inevitable disintegration of order and man-made interventions.

It was a new experience to hear a painter speak, as opposed to mixed media artists or sculptors. Painting seems quite removed from my own practice and I was a bit puzzled by the talk because I found it hard to think in depth about the paintings. I liked the subject of the work, and thought they had a beautiful aesthetic, but I wasn't sure how much they spoke to me of the ideas he said inspired them. I find paint as a material interesting, and would quite like to explore it in a sculptural way but using it to represent something else in a 2D manner seems to me insufficient, it lacks complexity. I don't find this the case with all paintings, but I felt Francis' recent sculptural works had a lot more depth to them, for me they had a much bigger impact than the paintings because they are real and tangible objects.