Frances Wells

Show Statement: Maine Coast to Hudson River

I have always been moved by beautiful landscapes at transitional times of the day. I'm drawn to the mystery of light just blooming on the horizon at dawn and its opposite as it diminishes at dusk. In most of the paintings in this group I want to capture that moment when the earth or the water reflect the fleeting colors in the rapidly changing sky. Most recently I've begun to explore nighttime and its cooler, more monochromatic palate, where the light source is the moon, street lamps, a building on a hillside or a village on a shoreline. In all of my work it is my hope that the viewer moves through the painting and travels still further transported to a place in his or her own imagination.

Artist Statement:

I have been painting landscapes since childhood. My first teacher was my grandmother, Eloise Long Wells, who was a Missouri and Mississippi River painter. Together we explored and painted these rivers, their levees, the surrounding hills, bluffs, and bottom lands. She taught me to be attentive to the light and haze in that humid country side which we both loved, especially at transitional times of day. As a young woman she had five children, but she always had a studio to work in. Even if it was in the basement, it was called "The Pilot House," the highest place on the steamboat where the captain navigated the ever changing and often treacherous river.

I have lived on the West bank of the Hudson outside of New York City for the past twenty years. I now have my own "Pilot House" overlooking the river which continues to be my primary subject. Like the Hudson River School painters I am captivated by the luminosity of the Hudson and its valley. I strive to capture moments of a river which I consider an ever changing work of art in and of itself.

Biography:

Frances Wells was born in St. Louis, Missouri and graduated from Bennington College. There she studied painting, drawing and print making with an art faculty which included Pat Adams, Vincent Longo, Peter Stroud and Jules Olitsky among others. For the last twenty years she has lived on and painted the Hudson River and its surroundings. Her work has been shown in Manhattan, Rockland and Westchester counties and is in over 500 collections throughout the United States and Canada.

website: www.franceswells.com