Mark 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 lives and works in London.
Mark Francis
Ultrasound II, 2021
oil on paper
132 x 96 cm / 52 x 37.8 in paper size
140 x 104 cm / 55.1 x 40.9 in framed size
Mark Francis
Ultrasound I,2021
oil on paper
132 x 96 cm / 52 x 37.8 in paper size
140 x 104 cm / 55.1 x 40.9 in framed size
Mark Francis
White Light (Spatial Dimension CRD), 2018
acrylic on canvas
214 x 153 cm / 84.3 x 60.2 in
Mark Francis
Nucleus (Restriction), 1995
oil on canvas
213 x 183 cm / 83.9 x 72 in
Collection of Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
Milton Keynes Gallery, 2000
Mark Francis’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Tate, London and Liverpool; Whitechapel Gallery, Design Museum, and the Royal Academy in London; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin. Collections include Tate, London; V&A, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art, Miami and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri. Current and forthcoming exhibitions include Acoustic Oceans, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (Solo, 12 July – 24 August) and Collecting Contemporary, British Museum, London, UK (Group, 25 April – 29 September).
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, 2008
Mark Francis
Pulse, 2008
The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
Mark Francis
Elements, 2000
Milton Keynes Gallery, London, UK
Mark Francis
Mark Francis, 1995
City Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
Taking you behind the scenes and into the studio.
Cinematographer: Erin Hope Francis, 2020
