The artist

She was born in Corigliano Calabro, in Calabria, the fifth of eleven children.

As a young woman she joined her sister in Pavia, where she settled for good. The scents, colours and atmospheres of her land followed her to the Lombard city and keep returning in her works.

At the end of 2013 she met Fatima, a 27-year-old Syrian woman living in deep loneliness with her husband and children in the same building.

When Fatima showed her a drawing of two broken wings, a metaphor for her own life, Franca thought she could reach her through painting, even without any artistic experience. She was 53, and discovered herself a painter.

Since then she has seen in artistic creation not only the power to build relationships, but also the power to heal suffering, other people’s and her own.

While learning about painting she discovered the work of the American artist Mark Carder, studied his technique and decided to write to him. He asked her for more photographs of her paintings; a lively correspondence followed and took her to the United States, where Carder invited her to stay and pursue her career.

Franca chose not to live far from her land and returned to Italy, eager to experiment and to speak to the world through painting.

Her technique, born self-taught, developed through the study of art history and artistic techniques at the Accademia di Brera and in Houston, where she studied Carder’s style, and through exchanges with Italian and international artists.

She finds inspiration in Impressionist technique and loves compositions with individuals isolated among many. To her, the paradox of “loneliness in the crowd” defines today’s society, made of many relationships that are often superficial, if not virtual.

She feels the strong influence of Van Gogh and the evocative power of the works that adorn Italy’s cathedrals, while always searching for new experiments in composition, in line and in the use of colour.

There is no sketch, no preparatory drawing. Composition, figures and colours reach the canvas in a single impulse, guided only by the wish to give voice to her inner world.

Looking has to be careful, because characters and actions often reveal themselves slowly, only by searching among the colours of the composition.

Her favourite technique is oil on canvas; experimentation has led her to tempera, India ink, grisaille and acrylic, on linen canvas, cotton fabric or cotton board. In her darkest periods the backgrounds turn deep and figures of an ancestral world emerge from them, in the clash between evil and good, shadow and light; moments of joy give rise to vivid colours and sinuous lines that recall dance.