FRANCESCA RAPHAEL LINCOLN

Ceramics, Painting, Sculpture

ABOUT FRANCESCA

I find the process of turning clay into form or paint into image absorbing, challenging, and when it works, hugely satisfying.

Although by profession a Psychoanalyst, making work from clay, paint and drawing, has always been part of my life. I began learning pottery as a 6 year old in a local children’s Saturday class and learned more in a working studio pottery during weekends as a teenager. In adulthood, alongside my professional life, I studied drawing, painting and ceramic sculpture.

EXHIBITIONS

  • ‘Primavera’ at The Barbican Library, Silk Street, London EC2 (2019)
  • ‘Arboretum’ at Stephen House, London N2 2018
  • ‘Nature’ at The Phoenix Cinema, London N2 2019
  • ‘Townhouse Open’ Spitalfields, London E1 2023

MY WORK

POTTERY

There are two main strands to my clay work, firstly the domestic ware and sculpture. The domestic ware consists of cups, bowls, plates, jugs and planters. This work is for the home and reflects my love of making useful domestic objects that are also aesthetically pleasing. I try to follow William Morris’s advice: ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’. One series makes use of the simplicity and austerity of tin-white glaze on a terracotta clay body, another is more playful and colourful, using decoration to bring a white earthenware clay body to life.

CERAMIC SCULPTURE

The second strand of my clay work is the ceramic sculpture; a developing series of stoneware clay figures. Whilst they stand as individual pieces, they are frequently bought as small groups, since they relate to each other in endlessly changing ways.

My preoccupation is with the expression of emotion through gesture; the tilt of a head, the lifting of a chin towards the light, feeling conveyed in the most minimal way.

DRAWING & PAINTING

The practice of studying ‘still life’ is hundreds of years old, and is as compelling to me now as it has been to countless artists over generations. My work focusses on the day to day objects I find at home, an old jug, an apple, the dresser with a row of much-loved cups hanging on it. There is beauty to be found in these familiar things if we stop and look – the depth of colour in the Pomegranate’s skin, the shadow cast by an egg on the kitchen table.