Paul Francis
Paul Francis is a Scottish contemporary artist living and working in Glasgow, with studios in Glasgow and Lanarkshire. Working predominantly in acrylic, his practice moves between portraiture, the human figure and the social landscape, drawing on music, politics, working-class history, memory and place.
His paintings are characterised by strong drawing, crisp edges and carefully constructed areas of colour and tone. In recent work, deep blues and chromatic greys have become increasingly important, set against flashes of stronger colour and the natural warmth of the figure. Paul describes this developing visual language as Northern Blue Modernism — bringing together figurative painting, modernist simplification and the particular atmosphere and visual character of the northern world.
Portraiture remains at the heart of his work. His subjects have included figures from music, politics, art, sport and popular culture, alongside people and moments encountered in everyday life. Likeness is important, but the intention is never simply to reproduce a photograph. He looks for the character beneath it: the particular turn of a face, the tension of a gesture, the weight of experience or the quality that makes an individual immediately recognisable.
Increasingly, that same approach has extended beyond the portrait. Streets, cafés, architecture, crowds and fragments of ordinary life have begun to occupy a larger place in his work. These paintings explore the relationship between people and their surroundings and allow colour, light and atmosphere to become subjects in themselves.
Paul's path to art was not straightforward. Trained in law, he spent years immersed in words, arguments and evidence. Yet the pull of painting grew stronger. The discipline of legal study brought precision, structure and a respect for contradiction — qualities that continue to shape his approach to the canvas. Where law was concerned with building cases, art offered the possibility of opening spaces.
His working process reflects that combination of discipline and freedom. Paintings often begin with careful drawing and consideration of proportion before being constructed through layers of acrylic, blocks of tone and increasingly expressive marks. Graphic contours, traces of the underlying drawing and areas of simplified colour are often allowed to remain visible. The finished work sits somewhere between observation and interpretation, precision and instinct.
Travel is an increasingly important part of his practice. Paul continues to travel and to learn from the different light and colour of the places he encounters. A Mediterranean street, the changing light across an unfamiliar city, the colours of buildings, faces or an ordinary café can all become part of a continuing visual education. These experiences are carried back into the studio rather than simply recorded, gradually influencing the palette and direction of new work.
Northern Blue Modernism is therefore not a manifesto or a fixed formula. It is the name given to an evolving visual language — rooted in figurative painting and the northern experience, but increasingly informed by travel, colour and light. It provides space for portraiture, political and cultural imagery, urban life and landscape to coexist within the same body of work.
Paul Francis lives in Glasgow, where he maintains a studio, alongside his studio in Lanarkshire. His practice continues to develop through painting, looking and travelling — always returning to the possibilities of the human figure, colour and the painted surface.