Francesca Mollett’s Abstract Canvases Radiate with Luminous Energy

“My work always comes from my curiosity about something I’ve seen,” says Mollett. Recently, these moments of intrigue have been largely encountered in nature, discovered during residencies in Turin, Italy, and at the Roberts Institute of Art in Scotland. Emanating from an observational starting point, her paintings “keep turning and transforming,” she says. A bench set into a grotto wall, for instance, becomes a lush diptych with a dynamic and detailed “improvised texture.” It will anchor “Corso” at Grimm, her first solo show in New York, on view through June 22.  

“Francesca’s intensely worked yet delicate abstractions radiate with luminous energy,” says gallery founder Jorg Grimm, who mounted her solo show “Halves” in Amsterdam last year. That installation featured canvases of “painted doors in the city and how they became like water,” explains Mollett, who is also working toward a presentation at The Warehouse in Dallas, opening in spring 2025.

Her process pulls upon myriad sources: from Cézanne watercolors and photographs of Marisa Merz’s living sculptures to literature; she cites The Baudelaire Fractal by Lisa Robertson and Plot by Claudia Rankine as recent highlights. Even a single word can have a significant impact. When reading If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson, Mollett was struck by the Greek term poikilos, meaning “dappled.” “I really enjoyed all the different translations—intricate, embroidered, variegated—and thought about its shifting quality in relation to some of the paintings.” Undoubtedly, Mollett’s interpretation will be equally transcendent and multifaceted.

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Spring Issue under the headline “Singular Expressions.” Subscribe to the magazine.