(32) works in category
Biography
Frans is a Dutch born artist now living in the UK. His work has been much influenced by both Picasso...
Frans Wesselman
Biography
Frans is a Dutch born artist now living in the UK. His work has been much influenced by both Picasso and Rembrandt and he has seriously tried to paint like both, finding no contradiction in this. " I am a qualified teacher of
art history so it is all in me and gets used."
His work is of people doing things, feeling things, worrying about things. His work is thought provoking - as Frans puts it -"I need to have my mind engaged". He is trying always to get inside his subjects, to convey an
impression of the human psyche. "It is the most difficult job I have ever done", says Frans, "but also the most rewarding".
Biography
Born in The Hague, Holland. 1975 - qualified to teach art and art history at Tilburg teacher training college. 1978 - Gained diploma in print making and photography at Groningen college of art. 1981 - Elected fellow of Royal Society of Printmakers. 1993 - Robertson prize for printmaking.
1996 - Shropshire County Council commission for limited edition print. 1997 - Artist in lottery funded Painting and Poetry project in Telford primary school. 1998 - Printmaker in residence at Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke on Trent. 1999 - Printmaker of the month, Leicester City Museum and Art Gallery.
Selected Exibitions:
Recent one man shows:
1999 Galerierie Inkt, The Hague, Holland
1998/'99 Silk Top Hat Gallery, Ludlow
1996/'98 Ombersley Gallery
1999 Portico Gallery, Manchester
Shared and group exhibitions include:
1998/'99 Bilcliffe Gallery, Glasgow
1991 Catto Gallery, London
1995/'96 Royal Watercolour Society, London
1997/'99 National Print Exhibition, London
1998/'99 Inkt, The Hague
Annually since 1981 Royal Society of Printmakers, Bankside Gallery, London
"I am a painter above all. I love to look at paintings and drawings, I get a lot out of it. You can look at the detail of a picture and marvel at what the artist has achieved by a single brush stroke. That is it, the satisfaction, when you find the right stroke and it just lights up the whole picture". He says a painting is successful if it has a living character, an independent life of its own.
Half of Frans work is in oils and the other half is the production of limited edition fine art prints in his own mix of wood cut and etching - a medium which can give an amazingly 3D impression. Surprisingly for a such a modern painter he finds many of his ideas in Shakespeare, Chaucer and the Bible.
