FRANCES HATCH ARWS

ABOUT FRANCES

Frances grew up in the Fens near Ely at the edge of The Wash. Its black earth called her into relationship with the bright air and its dark peat underbelly. This connection manifested plein air paintings from childhood. She left home to study in Wales, France, and London- travelling widely to work with environments such as Norway, Finland, Iceland, Guernsey, Orkney, Scotland. In those magnificent meetings with unfamiliar landscapes a fierce appetite to meet new land would always manifest new work. Her artwork has always been and remains evangelical: it speaks of experiences too effervescent to contain.

A journey to Antarctica in 2005 prompted her to question an assumed right-to-roam the world. Antarctica is bruised by any boots that walk over her, no matter how well-meaning the boot. Sublime majesty and excruciating vulnerability were clearly manifest in that great desert continent. How could she claim to love that engine of the world’s ice if her journey there degraded it?

And so, increasingly, Frances elects to cover ground with few air miles. The joy of encounter is no less present- it dwells inside an intimacy that grows out of relationship and returning.

The timid fen child knew reciprocity in the way that children know these things. She remains child in her wide-eyed making. Site-responsive work emerges out of relatedness and reciprocity. The works literally become containers of shared experience.

The Jurassic Coast, within easy reach of Frances’ Portland studio, offers earth palettes with generous tonal and colour ranges. She works with the gifts of each place: unique ‘palettes’ and mood (weather, season, temperature). Commercially manufactured paint (gouache, acrylic or watercolour) is introduced and integrated with the ‘stuff’ of place. Water, present as humidity, precipitation or as a body, is the vehicle that facilitates integration.

Elected as Associate of The Royal Watercolour Society in 2022, Frances has joined a community that forges images with water as vehicle.

PORTLAND STUDIO visits by appointment

@francesahatch

TRAINING:

C.C.A.T. (Cambridge) Foundation Course 1973-74
Aberystwyth University College of Wales – Hons degree in French and Visual Art 1974-78
Auditrice Libre, Ecole des Beaux Arts, Nantes 1976
Goldsmiths’ College, A.T.C. 1978-79
Wimbledon College of Art: Postgraduate- MA Printmaking 1986-89

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PAINTERS IN WATERCOLOURS. The Mall Galleries, 2016 – 2022
ROYAL SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS OPEN. The Mall Galleries, London 2022
ROYAL WATERCOLOUR SOCIETY/ BANKSIDE GALLERY 2020- regular on-going
ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION. 2016 + 2019
KEVIS HOUSE GALLERY, Petworth. Solo and group shows 2014 on-going
THE RUSSELL GALLERY, London. 2020- on-going
SLADERS YARD, West Bay, Dorset. 2015- on-going
THE COMMON GROUND. Crafts Study Centre, U.C.A. Farnham. 2020
BERMONDSEY PROJECT SPACE, London. 2019+ 2021
DRAWING ON DORSET. Fine Foundation Gallery, Durlston near Swanage, Lighthouse in Poole, Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester. 2019
IGNITING SIGHT: Contemporary Artists inspired by Turner. SLADERS YARD, West Bay, Dorset. July-Sept 2019
THELMA HULBERT GALLERY, Honiton, solo show 2017
THE ATKINSON GALLERY, Milfield Open 2021
LYNN PAINTER-STAINERS PRIZE. Mall Galleries, The Mall, London. 2014 + 2016
THE ING DISCERNING EYE EXHIBITION, The Mall Galleries. 2013 + 2015 + 2016
THE GATEHOUSE GALLERY, St Peter Port, Guernsey. solo show 2016
WORKS ON PAPER FAIR, London. 2015 + 2016 +2017
RWS GALLERIES London ‘Now’ group show 2023
BRANTWOOD, Coniston Water. solo show March-July 2024

AWARDS:

Visiting Artist. Gate House Gallery, Guernsey. March 2016
The Shenzhen International Watercolour Biennial Prize at The Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) exhibition: 2016
The Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton OPEN 2016- (winner)
Bursary awarded by the Department for International Trade Southwest. 2018
ARTmine, Agora Gallery, Chelsea, New York. USA. 2019.
Abbotsbury Landscape Artist of the Year 2023

RESIDENCIES:

PAVILLION DANCE, Bournemouth 2011 + 2012
DURLSTON COUNTRY PARK NATIONAL NATURE RESERVE. Swanage 2014
SOIL CULTURE RESIDENCY at The Eden Project: shortlist. August 2014
BRANTWOOD RESIDENCY, Coniston Water, Cumbria. Sept/October 2019

PUBLICATIONS:

Drawn to Antarctica: an artist’s view. 2005 Viriditas Press. ISBN: 978-0-9562647-0-1
Earth- 2014 (with Sladers Yard) 2015
Chesil Moons: 2017 Viriditas Press. ISBN 978-0-9562647-1-8
With Red Earth Under My Nails: 2017 Viriditas Press. ISBN 978-0-9562647-2-5
The Common Ground. 2020. The Crafts Study Centre. ISBN 978-1-9162971-0-4

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PUBLICATIONS:

Missal Birds: origami microbook printed by Steve Hitchens poems by Elisabeth Bletsoe.
Towards Re-Enchantment: Place and Its Meanings. Artevents, 2010. (at the invitation of Elisabeth Bletsoe, poet)
Artist and Illustrators Magazine, Featured Contributor. January 2014 issue.
40 Artist Educator Project. Commissioned by Access Art 2014
Drawing and Painting: Materials and Techniques for Contemporary Artists. Thames and Hudson, 2015
The Jackdaw Magazine. Easel Notes. May/June Issue. 2016
Drawing on Dorset. Dorset Visual Arts. 2019. ISBN 978-1-5262-0790-6

Landscape painter, lecturer, Associate of The Royal Watercolour Society. Studio base on the Isle of Portland, Dorset.

I grew up walking Fenland droves and fields around Littleport at the edge of The Wash. Its black earth shaped the fundamentals of my practice. Ice-edged Siberian winds marked childhood winters and sharpened an appetite for outdoor practice. My parents each had a box of watercolours they were too busy to use. The pans were ungenerous and reluctant I remember, yet they provided me with a vehicle to respond to experiences that were marvellous to me in my meanderings. Marvels like a willow flaring orange against a storm sky or ice forming in the colour. That sort of marvel stopped me in my tracks - and still does.

My way of being with the land is dirtier nowadays. I literally work with the whatever stuff surrounds me. I'm less self conscious. Less attached to outcome. With an appetite for relationship and reciprocity. I remain a praise poet at heart.

I still choose to work with water-based media- integrating colour (gouache, acrylic or watercolour) with what is available in the landscape (earth pigment foraged on site or contemporary human-generated debris).

With water as the vehicle, precipitation, humidity, temperature, gale and breeze all play with the evolving and dissolving of works.

My pieces are team-work in which weather and personality of place participate. Each site offers a palette, inviting something particular of me. Paintings become containers of experience.

When control is relinquished, then the magic can begin.

BEACH CANVAS for Frances Hatch

She is open to the open air -

a painter kneeling

on bonfire-blackened shingle

mixed with debris the sea has tossed up.

Rain won’t deter her.

Quite the contrary:

it too will be something to hand,

softening surfaces, seeping in.

She works with stuff

that is all a meeting and a mixing:

greensand, gault, lias

this present moment

with geological ages

on the Jurassic coast.

Paint encounters earth

fallen from cliffs,

plant life, flotsam, all

the material makings of place.

As she anchors her canvas

with a rock and light flashes

where the cliff torn with a fall

catches the sun, I want to tell her

what her art means to me.

I could put it simply

and it would be true.

What she brings me into,

quickened with imagination,

is the living world.

But is that enough?

We need words that glow with inner light:

Words that come with a touch

of life that makes them what they are –

life of flesh and spirit,

and not with colour daubed on,

but with the inner glow

that is energy,

the vibrant flower

and the mud it grows in.

What she reveals,

what I seek to speak of,

is place renewed,

broken shore and wave breaking

here, at this moment, all the instability

of the land we live on and love.

Jeremy Hooker. June 2023