A View from the Easel
Featuring: Frances Ferdinands
In 2015 and 2017, Ferdinands returned to Sri Lanka to be mentored in traditional arts and crafts. There she studied temple mural painting, bobbin lace making, and mask making. This experience has served to enrich Ferdinands’ cultural understanding of her Sri Lankan heritage and her sense of place within it.
Her most recent paintings, the “Cultural Intersections” series hover between representation and abstraction and feature a mix of Western, Middle Eastern, and South Asian imagery, patterning, and historical and contemporary references. Colourful, active and densely layered they celebrate within a contemporary framework the long and overlapping traditions of decoration and craftsmanship that are the underpinnings of many non-western cultures.