Framkie Partridge

Frankie's childhood was spent at the local swimming pool on Jesus Green in Cambridge,or canoeing on the river Cam with her best mate Lois, in a boat made by herself and her Dad. Saturdays were spent drawing and painting or making primitive comics with printing gel, or writing purple-passaged novels. There were nights spent sneaking out with a gang of friends to look round the fairground at the age of eight, or later on, punting down the river from Granchester during May Ball time.
Frankie believed she was an artist, so Frankie went to Bath Academy of Art to study Visual Communication. She spent four years there, studying printmaking techniques, but was not interested in advertising as a career so eventually made a career in teaching, after studying Humanities at UWE and then a PGCE at Bristol University. Frankie went on to do a Masters in Education at UWE, and a course in Dyslexia. She had a daughter in that time, and when she was three, she wrote a visual story for BBC Playschool which was presented in both the UK and Australia.
During the 1990's, she travelled greatly during her long summer holidays, visiting relatives in Whangarei, North Island New Zealand several times, making journeys through South East Asia and also visiting Ghana.
Frankie also got back into printmaking, making monoprints. At the Praxis Gallery in Bristol, she exhibited her impressionistic wilderness and rainforest prints, inspired by the wildernesses of North Island NZ. Frankie was in love with Ponga fern trees, in the primordial rainforest there, and the strange wild beauty of the mangrove swamps.
She exhibited at the old Happening Gallery, with other artists, on Cotham Hill. She has also worked on Murals with her friend Clare Calascione, including the Balloon mural in the BRI, and the mural in the corridor of Frenchay Hospital Children's ward. They also produced the mural for the first Bristol Parkway station. Murals were part of her development to large scale works. When the Praxis Gallery closed down, she continued to Monoprint in oils with the Spike Island Etching Studio as it was then, under Martin Grimmer. This was at Artspace, in Gas Ferry Road. Coincidentally, Frankie Partridge was one of the founding members of Artspace.
When Spike Island moved round the corner to its premises in Cumberland road, she continued to print there using both the etching and screenprint facilities. With Spike Print Studio, she has been involved in many exhibitions including one at the Serpentine Gallery in London, in Bath at the Edgar Modern, and the recent ones in Bristol at Paintworks and The Awning Project. Frankie had a joint exhibition there with Maita Robinson in November 2007.

Her recent interests in printmaking have been in two directions: the depiction of light, colour and movement in water trying to convey the essential elements and in the strange and exotic underworlds of people that exist on the fringes of life, such as travellers with funfairs. Then there are those from every walk of life who come together in love of the 'rush' of a 'white knuckle ride'. For this, the element of photography is important for me as it is proof of the existence of 'strange' reality, and it can tell a story without words.
Conversely, she also has an interest in brushstroke marks; these Frankie loves to see in her monoprinted or painted work, as they are evidence of the movement and touch of the brush – built up they recreate a new reality. She hates paintings or drawings where you can't see these marks. Her most recent works involve combining these with their antithesis, the photographic medium.