Devastation of Light: The Recovered Paintings of Rita Francis

Gallery Autochthone is proud to present Devastation of Light: The Recovered Paintings of Rita Francis. Recovered from the artist’s cabin following a mysterious disappearance, the six paintings presented here demonstrate a watershed moment in Francis’s burgeoning career. The urban Mi’kmaw landscape painter departs from the muted tones of her previous work, leaning harder into the abstract elements of her style, including inspiration from her cultural heritage. Moving deeper into an experimental mode, her mixed-media acrylic work utilizes elements of the pond where she was a resident. Repurposing sticks, moss, and other detritus from the pond’s surroundings to reconfigure the viewer’s orientation within the landscape, Francis challenges the landscape tradition itself. The startling and mysterious pieces shown here are designed to cajole, disturb, and interrogate the viewer, showing us everything from Mi’kmaw symbols to tortured figures contending with the land in new ways. Pain strikes through the alienation and intimacy of each painting’s relationship to the land. In these paintings we see the murky, urgent depths of a woman’s spiritual journey into the swamplands of uncertainty.