BIOGRAPHY

Mark Francis was born in Newtonards, Co. Down, Northern Ireland in 1962, and studied at St. Martin’s College of Art and Chelsea School of Art, London. Francis makes powerful, optically intense paintings that are driven by the revelatory insights of contemporary science. Filled with a sense of movement and vibrational energy, his paintings combine electric colour contrasts with dynamic patterns and precise brushwork. Fields of colour are shot through with orbs or pulsating linear forms that dissolve or disintegrate, mimicking streams of light, sonic vibrations, or graphs of seismic patterns. Francis’s longstanding fascination and engagement with science provides rich territory for his painting, from the vast, cosmic terrains of astronomy to the minute and molecular concerns of mycology. Making striking imagery out of what is normally invisible, he explores the visual worlds made accessible by electron microscopes, or sonic data gathered from outer space. But while the feats of manmade technology inform Francis’s work, the thing of wonder remains the unknowable quantities beyond their reach. This is what Francis uses his imaginative power and painterly skills to conjure – sparking a tension between order and chaos, knowledge and mystery that is at the heart of his work.

Mark Francis’ solo shows include Dirimart, Istanbul (2014); Abbot Hall Gallery, UK (2010); Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane (2008); City Art Gallery, Manchester (1995); and a highly acclaimed retrospective exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery (2000). His work was featured in New Generation, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland and in Cream, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2010). Francis’s work featured in the much-debated Saatchi Collection exhibition Sensation, Royal Academy, London and the Brooklyn Academy, New York, and in the touring exhibition Absolut Vision: New British Painting in the 1990s. He is represented in numerous collections including Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Tate Gallery, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art, Miami; The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri; and Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin.