Francesca Mollet’s work Spokes, 2023, was recently acquired by the Sainsbury Centre where it can be seen among the Centre’s Living Area. Part of a strong re-emergence of contemporary abstract painting, Mollett’s work also closely relates to the Sainsbury’s historic collection of Lyrical Abstraction and Tachism.
Francesca Mollett makes abstract paintings that react to space and context, often taking their starting point from organic subjects rendered so that their details dissolve into nebulous and fluctuating forms. Her works capture reflections of light and surface through a fluid yet precise process, with compositions evolving through observation, analysing the shifting passages of paint as tension between luminosity and solidity develops.
Deeply influenced by literature, Mollett reveals a relationship between the ethos of life and of time, elusive and unable to be articulated through representation alone. In this, abstraction - through colour and texture - becomes an attentive way of considering these affinities.
