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Francesca Raft grew up under the influence of art...
A former model, Raft's travels took her around the world, and her works are reflective of serenity and turbulence, of mood and emotion, of places she has been. "I remember when I was young and modelling in New York, the intensity of the storms that used to come over,” she says, “the incredible deep, rich blues and greens that I'd never seen anywhere before. Rome is incredible, too; those skyscapes tend to creep in to my work, I see them later."
Returning to Australia to start a family ignited her love for the light, landscape and the unknown, which she continues to paint from her studio in Sydney. Her works hang throughout the Newtown terrace that Raft, shares with her partner ... her "garret" studio is a little piece of Paris in Sydney's urban inner west: she pins up pictures that inspire her and paints against the original brick chimney wall.
"It's very important to me to have a space of my own. I need a wall, basically.”*
The photographer Martyn Thompson in his book, Working Space, which profiles Raft's studio writes, "She paints very sombre landscapes. Even when she was very young, I always felt there was something very 'old soul' about her; her paintings reflect that."
For Raft, inspiration lies just outside her window. In the afternoons, she paints, three or four days a week, "when the light's right and my mood is right". "I have a deck and a complete sky view: it looks towards the mountains and Botany Bay, I absorb by looking at the sky. It's perfect. I'm very lucky.”*
Through her attic window, storm-filled skies find their way into the interior landscapes of artist Francesca Raft's mind and from there on to canvas, where the rest of us can see for ourselves what mood looks like in painted form.*
They tend to be inspirational, she says of her artworks. When I paint, even though I might have an idea in mind, they come from somewhere else - they re almost like what I need, as well?*
*The ARTIST, in a new book by Vogue Living contributor Martyn Thompson, The Sydney home of Artist Francesca Raft speaks of soulful industry. Photographer Martyn Thompson, writer Lisa Thomas. Vogue Living Australia, 2013 September/October Pages 140 - 145.
Solo Exhibitions
I feel the ever-evolving need to connect to source, the colour, the darkness, the light, the inner knowing that flows through my hands as I paint.
Sometimes it feels not of my own doing, it seems to reveal its' self, already known, made visible. The inner landscape that binds me to nature, and connects me to this innate source, that we call life and art, that flows continuously through me. My collectors engage in this journey into the infinite spaces I create. Experiencing the nature of time and light, silence and noise, the temporal and eternal, always changing and shifting. The story is forever unfolding and one that I express through my work.
I am inspired by the simplicity of light, colour and form... the landscape, the essence of nature.... I am forever captive by it's transcending beauty. ~ Francesca Raft, March 2024.
Available Work
