FRANCES HATCH

Frances was born and raised in the fenland village of Littleport in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire. She currently lives in Weymouth in Dorset. By the time she left home for University – chosen for its location by the sea – she had already established her plein air practice of painting.

After the post graduate Art Teachers’ Course at Goldsmiths she became an apprentice to Ann Brunskill at The World's End Press in Wapping. She was then appointed Head of History of Art and Art at North Foreland Lodge School in Hampshire. She then returned as a mature student to complete an MA at Wimbledon School of art.

Throughout her working life Frances has maintained a spacious and reflective practice growing in ever deeper connection with landscape. She is a Senior Tutor at West Dean College, Chichester.

Frances makes site-responsive work, integrating site materials (anything from earth pigments to litter) with water-based media. Each site suggests and often offers its own palette and demands something particular of her. She integrates colour (gouache, acrylic or watercolour) with what is available in the landscape.

It is pertinent that the two pieces hung in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2016) were  placed in Gallery IV, which was described by its curator, Jock McFayden RA, as ‘radical landscape’. Frances was awarded The Shenzhen International Watercolour Biennial Prize at The Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) exhibition (2016) - an award to encourage innovation and experimentation in contemporary water media.

”When grubbing around for tools and pigments in each environment, I make discoveries about a place that I might otherwise miss. If I return, even a day later, a different set of possibilities arise because I’m different and I’m encountering matter, water, light and air that continually fluctuate.”

2020 has been a busy year for Frances. At the invitation of Professor Simon Olding she curated a show for The Crafts Study Centre (celebrating its 50th anniversary year), at University College for the Arts Farnham: The Common Ground opened in January.  

Environments within which she has recently worked in include Guernsey, Norfolk, Norway, Devon, The Isle of Purbeck, along The Jurassic Coast near her home and the North West Highlands of Scotland.

In her own words: “Each site suggests and often offers its own palette and demands something particular of me… at times I integrate colour (gouache, acrylic or watercolour) with what is available in the landscape and at others the found material offers all.”