Francine Brady

Francine Brady works in Maryland as an artist, specializing in painting. She uses acrylics as her main medium and likes to keep an air of mystery in her work. Francine majored in art at Hunter College in New York City during the 1960's when the Abstract Expressionist movement was going strong. She did postgraduate work at CW Post on Long Island, and after moving to Baltimore, took courses at Maryland Institute College of Art. Her paintings are known for their many bright colors. Her drawings on the other hand, are very simple. She usually only uses pen or graphite pencils. She also uses little amounts of shading and allows for a lot of the paper to show through her work. She’s often compared art to a puzzle that she has to figure out and describes having a “aha” moment during the process of each piece. She says she often does not know what the piece will become when she starts it. 

I personally really like Francine’s drawings. Many of them are simple and focus on one subject. She uses nature as inspiration in many of her sketches. However, her sketches are not always perfectly realistic, which I like. Many times she will twist a flower stem into a unique shape or manipulate the size and proportions. Her drawings remind me of some of my own doodles and drawings. She also likes to disregard reality in her pieces. One drawing is of a simple landscape, but she has a giant fish in the sky. Another seems to just be a floral garden, however, on closer inspection, you can see a small Thumbelina-esque figure staring up at a flower.