ARTIST’S STATEMENT

“The older I get, the more committed I am to recapturing my first impressions of the world.” John Adams, composer

PROFILE

Kirsten Francis was born in New Hampshire in 1970 and spent her childhood in Massachusetts, Mexico City, and Toronto, as well as many summers in Denmark with her mother’s family. In 1992 she graduated from Tufts University in Medford, MA with a BA in Classical Humanities. In 1997 she received a BFA in Printmaking from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR.

Francis’ imagery is based on the fairy tales, myths, and the richly illustrated storybooks she read as a child. In Mexico, she studied Aztec mythology and gained an early appreciation for the power and universality of archetype and symbolism. In Northern Denmark the sand dunes, gray sea, ancient churchyards, and wind-gnarled woodlands nourished an active imagination already made familiar with the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.

Fusing fairy tales and contemporary existence, Francis uses symbolic and archetypal images and juxtaposes them with events from her everyday life. In this way she can tap into the inherent magic and universality of personal experience.

Francis’ use of woodblock enhances a sense of the ancient and of the illustrative narrative in her work. The strong graphic quality of woodblock, combined with the expressiveness and looseness of her drawing, creates a tension and emotional intensity not found in other mediums. Her use of the color reductive woodblock technique, where one block is used to print successive layers of color, gives rich and surprising results, as well as small and limited editions.