JON FRANCIS
Fascinated by the legacy of American Tonalist painters, Jon Francis continues to explore in the tradition of earlier Californians who limited themselves to a simple color palette expressed in increasingly subordinate hues. Francis was born and raised in Laguna Beach. His youth spanned the years when Laguna Beach was in transition from one of the great West Coast art colonies to the visitor destination that it is today. Even in his early years he was an active painter winning awards at the Orange County Fair. His formal art training took place at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. There he studied among several of California's finest art educators including Lorser Feitelson, Harry Carmean and Bernice Politka.
While working as an advertising art director in New York and San Francisco, Francis extended his artistic training with designs for commercial graphics for major American corporations. As a director of television commercials, Francis won has won numerous citations including the Gold, Silver and Bronze Lions at the Cannes Film Festival. As a fine artist Jon Francis' work has been featured in the William Bell Gallery in New York, the California Art Club in Pasadena, the Claudia Chapline Gallery in Stinson Beach and the Bolinas Museum.
The paintings of Jon Francis reflect an interest in capturing the places and things of an earlier and simpler time. Francis builds upon the artistic sensibilities of artists at the beginning of the previous century like Arthur Mathews and George Inness by imbuing his subjects with suggestions of quiet grandeur at the same time utilizes a vocabulary of visual elements looking forward to more modernist impulses. Sullivan Goss is proud to offer this exhibition of new works by Jon Francis an accomplished contemporary tonal painter.