F R A N S W A Z Z A R T
EXHIBITIONS
Artist Alliance, 2021 Member Show
Art Alliance, Strange Nature, Online exhibition 2021
Art Alliance, Imaginery Travels, Online Exhibition 2021
ArtsThrive 2020, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Stories and Fables, 2020, Mariposa Gallery, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Southwestern Watercolor Society, 2019, Richardson, Texas
12 New Mexico Artists To Know Now, 2019, Southwest Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
ArtsThrive 2019, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM
Her Paper Stories, 2019, Mariposa Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
Curiouser & Curiouser, 2018, Mariposa Gallery, Albuquerque , NM
Paradox, 2017, Mariposa Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
The Dotted Line, 2016, Mariposa Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
Different Ways, 2015, Mariposa Gallery, 2015, NM
PRESS
"Barnes is a born-again abstract expressionist who includes collage with energetic hand-painted passages. Her "Stellar Opera" is a tour de force brimming with cosmic and more down-to-earth imagery and living dynamism."
Wesley Pulkka, Albuquerque Journal, March 10, 2019.
Art Folio 2022
Art Folio 2021
Gold
Douglas King, Editor
Art Folio 2020
Douglas King, Editor
Twelve New Mexico Artists To Know Now,
The Magazine, SWContemporary, 2019
ART QUILTS PRESS:
"...The three African-inspired mask quilts by Françoise Barnes display a complete mastery, not only in quilting techniques, but in creating illusions of depth and movement. Barnes quilts are unusually dynamic, and there is a wonderful play between abstract design and the literal depiction of an object…”
Diane Armitage, THE Magazine, April 1995
"Françoise Barnes uses the quilt medium almost as a painter would (her) canvas…the two dimensional plane of the quilt surface is manipulated to create the illusion of perspective in complex, abstract arrangements….bold, saturated colors play an integral role in the construction of the image…."
The Ohio Selection’85 Catalog, The Dayton Art Institute.
"…in a word, her work is extraordinary…Barnes’ compositions speed with color and form, defying the borders of the quilt…"
Art New England, June 82
"...this ambitious piece by Francoise Barnes was visually rich and elegant. She overlapped a network of bright colored shapes on a background of subtle grayed-down forms. It formed a very real though quite shallow space. Like a landscape painter she was echoing things I do in my own paintings
Philip Koch, painter, about her work Misumena Ellipsoides, at the Delaware Art Museum.
Born and educated in France, Françoise Barnes has been drawing and painting all her life. She is largely self-taught, but, after coming to the United States in the 1960's, she took drawing and painting classes at Ohio University and later, in the 80's, she also studied with the artist Murray Stern. Meanwhile, in the mid 70's she discovered quilts, at the time when America had started to look at quilts not only as bed covers, but also as a contemporary art form, unconstrained by tradition. This became a passion for her, and for the next 20 years she exhibited her art quilts, taught, juried and lectured in the US and abroad.
In 1979, Barnes co-founded Quilt National, a biennial exhibition which has since become arguably the most prestigious art quilt exhibition in the world. Her art quilts are in many private and corporate collections such as General Electric, Aetna, Delaware Art Museum (purchase), Ohio Arts Council Permanent Collection, etc.
In 1992 Barnes made the decision to end her career as a quilt maker, so that she could focus exclusively on painting. She initially worked in a representative manner with oils, but in the end found that the style that suited her best was abstract, using acrylics and mixed media, experimenting with a variety of marks, forms, compositions, and textures. In 2019, Barnes was named one of the "Twelve New Mexico Artists to Know Now" by THE Magazine.
Her paintings are in many private collections.
Françoise lives in Los Ranchos, New Mexico.