The burst of coloured energy in Francesca Simon’s recent work emerged initially at about the time of the first lockdown in 2020, partly in response to Bomberg’s Ju-Jitsu and In the Hold which were on display together at the National Gallery from the end of 2019 to March 2020. Simon made three paintings on aluminium, After Bomberg 1, 2 and 3, borrowing Bomberg’s geometry, but not his schematic figuration. Geometric shapes were painted in flat colour onto the surface of the aluminium, allowing the reflective surface to form part of the composition. These paintings used a much brighter and more varied palette than she had used previously.
Throughout the difficult time that followed the first lockdown Simon continued using bright colour (consciously seeking the raised spirits that colour imparts). The current body of work, on linen, developed from the paintings on aluminium. Up until that point of departure in 2020, layering and the conscious teasing back of the surface, to reveal what is or was below, had been an important element in Simon’s work but the new work is on the surface; it engages with the present and the challenge of an unforgiving method of working.
In the past Simon has written about a visual filtering process, objects seen or encountered appearing eventually to result in the making of an abstract image. She ascribed some of the texture and images of her earlier work to looking down while walking. The current work stems from more various visual experiences, some acquired through travel, in particular watching block printing of patterned fabric in India and seeing printed fabrics in Zanzibar, East Africa. Another factor is that she now spends most of her time in North Yorkshire, rather than London, where seasonal changes result in continuous colour change in her surroundings. But more than that, the current work consciously abandons her North European instinct for monochrome and embraces a simple pleasure in colour.
Alongside a new freedom with colour Simon adopted the discipline of a grid-based geometric formula; the freedom had to be confined. The new work is characterised by an almost architectural precision and an adherence to symmetry. Even rule breaking is limited; she views her support as a chess player views the board, a field of operation within a strict framework of rules.
Simon would agree with those who suggest her work has an architectural orientation, whether looking down, as in the spatial perception of the plan, or her interest in building design and its distinctive geometric shapes. In this year’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy her work was hung alongside drawings by Norman Foster, her work and his drawings exploring similar geometry.
Francesca Simon lives and works in Glaisdale, North Yorkshire.
November 2022