Frances Cooley - 2022

Frances Cooley is a painter specialising in oils, painting still life and portraits with 30 years experience. After finishing her degree, she spent many years as a graphic designer and illustrator in the UK, Hong Kong, Australia and America, while keeping up her drawing and painting. For the last ten years she has been working as a full time artist.

Studying the human figure is the foundation to all her drawings. In the last seven years she has applied herself to portraiture. Previous experience with life drawing has helped her to work swiftly with bold strokes to show the sitters personality and to give life and movement to the piece.

With still life,Frances' aim is to capture that first moment that attracted her to the subject, light, vibrancy of colour, abstract shapes and movement.

Frances says “I get a thrill from painting portraits, reacting to the person in front of me. This is normally quick to start with and I believe that you can get a good grasp of someone within the first few minutes of meeting them, I find it fascinating portraying this feeling. As the painting progresses I carefully follow the contours, the changing tones and use colours to create, light, volume and placement of the sitter within the composition.”