Sherron Francis (b. 1940)

Sherron Francis was born in 1940, in Downers Grove, IL outside of Chicago. She originally enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, but later transferred to the Kansas City Art Institute to focus more on art. Initially, Francis' practice was focused on figurative art, with visiting professor and renowned modern realist Philip Pearlstein remarking on Francis’ draftsman acumen.

In the early 1960s, art dealers and gallerists from New York would visit the Institute to entice promising artists by offering scholarships and financial aid. Because such financial arrangements were only made for men, Francis had to persuade the school's leadership to allow for women to also be eligible for merit-based aid. Her advocacy was successful, and she ultimately graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1963. She would then proceed to obtain her MFA from the University of Indiana, before assuming a teaching position at Eastern Michigan University.

In 1968, with only $300 on hand, Francis moved to 16 Waverly Place in SoHo, New York. The neighborhood was a hotbed for young AbEx artists of the day, and she quickly befriended the likes of Peter Reginato, Walter Darby Bannard, Michael Steiner, Peter Young, Peter Bradley, Larry Zox, and Larry Poons, who all lived and worked in the neighborhood. In fact, Francis introduced Larry Poons to his now-wife, Paula, who at the time, was a friend and student of Francis'.

In 1969, Francis helped found the Bowery Gallery, where she received her first solo exhibition the following year. This would be the only solo show of Francis' figurative years, as she transitioned to abstraction shortly thereafter.

By 1971, her old friend from Kansas City, the artist Dan Christensen, was also in New York and exhibiting with the famed gallerist André Emmerich. During the 1970s, Emmerich ran arguably the most influential gallery for Abstract Expressionists in the world, with a roster that included names such as: Hans Hofmann, Al Held, Esteban Vicente, David Hockney, and Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Jack Bush. Sherron Francis was added to that roster with her solo show that ran from January 27 to February 14, 1972. The show was by all accounts, a resounding success, with the critic Peter Schjeldahl commenting in the New York Times:

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“Francis has…sidestepped the danger of seeming hopelessly derivative of such artists as Mark Rothko, Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler —by, it seems to me, the use of a single canny formal device. All her canvases are tall, vertical rectangles. What this shape achieves is a physical presence that supports the paintings' fragile play of color and texture. Bearing roughly the proportions of the human body, but bigger in size, her pictures confront the viewer with a satisfying firmness, inviting delectation.”

The 1972 show at Emmerich essentially launched her career, as Francis exhibited at the 1973 Whitney Biennial, and then received a second solo exhibition at Emmerich the following year. Corporate collections and private collectors, including Helen Frankenthaler, purchased more than 60 of Francis' work from Emmerich in a 12-month span.

Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Francis would continue to exhibit at other leading American galleries, including Janie C. Lee Gallery (Houston), Barbara Kornblatt Gallery (Baltimore), Douglas Drake (Kansas City), Rubiner Gallery (Detroit), and Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York.

Fiercely independent, Francis never felt compelled for her work or lifestyle to conform or otherwise be influenced by her peers. While the major players in the art world opted for summers in the Hamptons, she chose to instead spend time in the more modest North Fork of Long Island. In the hamlet of Aquebogue, she even worked as a commercial fisherwoman on her own boat, named Bay Queen, enjoying the slower pace of life.

In the late 1970s, Francis became more interested in utilizing new acrylic and gel mediums that were becoming available. She moved away from her floating rectangular compositions and became freer in her brushstrokes adding thick layers of acrylic impasto. By 1980, she was also creating clay works and exhibiting them alongside Kikuo Saito and Betty Woodman. In 1983, art historian Jack Flam selected one of Francis’ paintings in his 16-work Artists Choose Artists II exhibition, which consisted of works by Carl Andre, Jim Dine, Brice Marden, Richard Serra, and Frank Stella.

Francis taught at several institutions including the Ridgewood School of Art and Design from 1972 to 1985, and Cooper Union from 1978 to 1985. But with the evolving landscape of downtown New York shifting, increasing rents and changing landlords forced many of the artists out of their longtime neighborhoods. When her building on Waverly Place was sold, Francis opted for the North Fork permanently. The move, coupled with her gradual disenchantment with the art world, would effectively end the career of one of the most promising female artists to emerge from the latter part of the post-war era.

Sherron Francis still lives on Long Island, having transitioned away from her career as an artist more than three decades ago. But recently, among the groundswell of support for the reappraisal of overlooked post-war female artists, Francis has found champions who have sought to bring her and her oeuvre out of obscurity.

Source: Lincoln Glenn Gallery