Mark Francis (artist)

Mark Francis (born 1962) is a Northern Irish painter living and working in London, England.

Francis was born in Newtownards, Northern Ireland and studied painting at St. Martin's School of Art (1980–85) before going on to the Chelsea School of Art where he completed his Master of Arts in painting in 1986. Francis has exhibited internationally both individually and in group exhibitions. As an emerging artist in 1995, Francis was involved in The Adventure of Painting at Kunstverein Düsseldorf/Stuttgart, Germany and From Here at the Karsten Schubert/Waddington Galleries in London. These shows were pivotal in questioning the role of contemporary painting both in Europe and the UK which consequently led Francis to show in prestigious exhibitions such as IMMA Glenn Dimplex Award exhibition Irish Museum of Modern Art (1996), Absolute Vision; New British Painting in the 1990s Museum of Modern Art Oxford (1996) and the infamous Sensation Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection exhibition (1997). By the year 2000, Francis was invited to exhibit an early career overview Elements at Milton Keynes Gallery.

Over the last thirty years, Francis' work has had a strong association with science. Throughout his career his abstract paintings have continually been informed by the shapes, patterns and visual qualities found by his personal interest in mycology. It is through this abstract language that Francis initiated his platform in the early 1990s to become one of the UK's leading contemporary painters and maintains to be at the forefront of critical evaluation within art shown in publications such as Painting Today.

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