Throughout November & December it is our very great honour to be able to show the immaculate artworks from Elaine Franks. Another example of the excellence of artistry in our locality. Elaine has exhibited with us before as part of the Save The Teifi campaign, but this will be her first full show.
Elaine draws and paints our local fauna in their habitats – and these are often particular creatures that she has been come to know. She works with pencil inks and watercolour.
The show will be on throughout November & December 2024.
All work on display is available for purchase or to order.
In her own words:
“One of our most talented…wildlife artists”
Sir David Attenborough
At four years old, Elaine Franks had started to paint and draw the natural world, a passion that has continued to develop to the present day.
After a childhood spent mainly in rural Carmarthenshire, a move to Devon as a student introduced her to the Undercliff, a unique SSSI on the Devon/ Dorset coast, where she was to work as a volunteer warden recorder for two years, the results of her research being publishes as ‘The Undercliff’ by JM Dent.
This was to be the first of some twenty or so published titles that she has worked on, including ‘Watching Wildlife’ a collaboration with Geoffrey Young, the founder of WATCH.
For many years now, Elaine has been working in rural mid Wales, having made a number of television appearances and as a result of exhibiting her artwork in London and throughout Britain, it is now held in public and private collections world wide.
Current work includes material for a future book based in the Teifi valley, plus workshops, teaching and commissions. She is also currently a director and gallery officer for a makers and artists co-operative, a partner in the Cae Hafan conservation project and a committee member of the Royal Watercolour Society of Wales.
For Elaine, painting is about communication, exploration, discovery and above all, celebration:
“I’m trying to share the joy I get when I walk out of my door into the amazing world we live in, to share a celebration of the things I encounter in my daily life.
My paintings are not about contriving ‘art’ or ‘expressing myself’ – who or what I am, is hilariously and wonderfully irrelevant….
My paintings are simply about celebrating the miraculous in the every day.
