Artist Statement
I communicate with the world by creating visual narratives. It is how I explore dreams deferred, connections to prior generations, the natural world and our place within it. Making art is my psychological release, my obsession and my salvation.
My images are intended to evoke a sense of transience, longing, memory, and, despite our yearning for connectedness, the dislocation we too often experience.
Process Statement
I create my images out of fragments of my photographs, captured during my extensive travels. My images begin with an idea that is not fully formed, but is informed by a memory, a concern, an emotion, or my reaction to external events. I alter, weave and transform this content in order to interpret images grounded in internal experience with those of concrete reality. My process is highly instinctual, organic, and I rely on not only my intuition but also years grounded in art history.
Occasionally, I’ll create paintings for background textures. But in general, I substitute the stylus for brushes, light for my palette, the tablet and monitor for a canvas, and photographic paper for the finished canvas.
The final images are an amalgam of photography and painting with pixels, digitally assembled.
Fran’s photo montage constructions have been exhibited widely, both locally and internationally, and are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (Washington, DC), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and many private collections.
Escape Artist: The Art of Fran Forman was published by Schiffer Publishing LTD and was selected as one of the Best PhotoBooks of 2014 by Elizabeth Avedon. Fran is also featured in Contemporary Cape Cod Artists: People and Places, 2014, Photoshop Masking and Compositing, 2012, and Internationales Magazin fur Sinnliche Fotografie (Fine Art Photo), 2014.
Fran’s solo exhibitions includes a six-month exhibit at the Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, England, in 2015. She has won significant top prizes: the 2013 Julia Margaret Cameron International First Prize in Fine Art Photography, the 2012 Px3 Prix de la Photographie (Gold, Silver, and First Prize in three different categories), where her work was on exhibit in Paris. In 2011, she was one of thirty Americans invited to attend and exhibit at the 2nd Biennial International Photographic Cultural Festival in Lishui and other venues in China. Also in 2011, she won Second Prize (among over 8000 entries) from the Worldwide Photography Gala in the Portraits category. In 2010 and 2008, she won first place, second place, and an honorable mention at the International Photography Awards, and an Honorable Mention at the Julia Margaret Cameron awards. In 2010, 2008 and in 2007, she was a winner in PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris, their People’s Choice award, and Adobe Photoworkshop.com. She has been a Critical Mass Finalist for three consecutive years. Her work appears in many journals, on-line blogs, several art books, and adorns the covers of many books.
She is represented by Pucker Gallery (Boston), AfterImage Gallery (Dallas), SusanSpiritus Gallery (Newport Beach, California), High Noon Art and Culture (Beijing), and Photo Méthode (Austin, Texas).
She is a Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis, a recipient of several grants and Artist Residencies, and teaches digital collage at various colleges in Boston.
Fran studied art and sociology at Brandeis University, received an MSW in psychiatric social work, and then an MFA from Boston University.
She has held a succession of positions in the field of graphic design, book cover art and web design. Between professional life and raising two daughters, Fran continued to create her personal art, combining her illustrative and photographic skills with a passion for surrealism, paradox, illusion, assemblage, the non-human world, and the dislocations of time and place.
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