Francesca Sundsten

Available Works

Francesca Sundsten's unique vision of the world is interpreted in a new series of hand-painted alterations on found photographs. Each image, a found portrait from the 1800s, is obscured or altered by Sundsten's accentuating a personality quirk or gesture in the sitter. There are two related but distinct bodies of work in this series, those painted with watercolor and those in oil. The watercolor paint sinks into the card stock and coexists with the photographed subject - in these Sundsten mixes her own embellishments with the camera's original capture; a third eye, an extra shock of hair, or the horns of Beelzebub. The second series consists of a layer of oil that completely obscures the underlying photograph. Sundsten uses the template of the sitter's pose and personality to create a very different character.

Sundsten has exhibited with Davidson since 1992. Her work is in numerous public and private collections including the Tacoma Art Museum and the Microsoft Art Collection.

Recent Exhibitions: New Paintings, Nov 2006; New Paintings, Sept 2003; Impediments & Perils, Apr 2002