I make abstract paintings, which are grid-based and geometric in design. The discipline and precision of a grid-based formula is important to me. I view my support almost as a chess player views the board, a field of operation within a framework of rules, though the rules are devised by me for my own purposes. I describe my work as non-objective but acknowledge a visual filtering process, objects seen or encountered leading eventually to the making of an image. My way into abstraction was originally through the topography and field shapes of North Yorkshire. I still live in the North York Moors and that landscape continues to play a part in my work; the sharp corners of geometric shapes sometimes correspond to fields enclosed by dry stone walls seen from a distance at an oblique angle. Other recent visual triggers have included Indian stepwells. The inverted ziggurat designs, which simplify to triangular forms, have been an important visual stimulus.
My commission to respond to a print by Josef Albers in a series of monoprints introduced me to the screenprint maker's simplicity of vision, colours as numbered layers, which can easily be switched.
Francesca Simon lives and works in Glaisdale, North Yorkshire.
September 2025