Frances Knight

 Frances Knight is a contemporary landscape artist whose paintings celebrate light, colour and atmosphere. Working predominantly in oils, she paints directly from nature, making studies outside on location before returning to her studio to develop some of these ideas into larger works.

Her paintings explore the space between abstraction and representation. Rather than simply recording a landscape, Frances responds to the experience of being within it – to changing light, shifting colour and the particular atmosphere of a place. Through this process, she seeks to create a dialogue between what is observed and what is felt, resulting in paintings that are expressive, joyful and full of life.

After graduating from Camberwell School of Art, Frances was awarded a British Council & Commonwealth scholarship to complete her MFA in India. Travel has always played a significant part in her painting life.

Frances regularly returns to Provence and the Netherlands to paint and has also worked in Alsace, Mallorca, Tuscany, India and the USA. Wherever she travels, painting on location allows her to respond immediately and intuitively to the landscape around her.

Frances’s work is held in collections internationally and she has exhibited regularly on the Arundel Gallery Trail since 2009, as well as at Chelsea Arts Society Annual Open Exhibitions, the South Downs Open and the Every Step of the Way South Downs Exhibition.

“I am not so much interested in rendering the surface qualities of a landscape, but in conveying the underlying structure, colour and atmosphere. I like to explore the interaction between the abstract qualities of the two-dimensional painted surface and the illusion of space.”