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Franck Moore ARCA Born 25th July 1913 Died 3rd June 2004. Franck was an artist and continued to paint until a few weeks before his death. His mother was French; he was one of six children. Although they lived in England, Franck only spoke French until he went to school at the age of seven. It was his mother who encouraged him to paint. Franck was a regular visitor to France and had a very close relationship with his French relations, the Podevin's. He studied at the Royal College of Art in London and at Goldsmith College. He then went on to study to be an art teacher because his father had insisted that he had another qualification. He was commissioned to make murals for a school in Heston; he designed theatrical sets. He worked as a fireman on the river Thames during the Blitz. Shortly after the 2nd World War at a college in Freckleton, Lancashire, Franck taught others to teach art. Subsequently he was appointed Head of Art at Willesden School of Art, until the college closed. By this time he had a family of four children all at school and was unable to devote as much time to painting as he would have liked. Franck was appointed as an Examiner of Art for London University and for many years was the chief examiner of ‘A’ and ‘O’ level Art for Associated Universities Examining Board. His next appointment was as Head of Art at a comprehensive college in Hemel Hempstead. Franck preferred working with more mature students and was becoming frustrated that he only had limited time to develop his own work. On retiring he opened Redbourn Art Gallery and became a governor of St Albans College of Art. More importantly for Franck he was now able to devote much more of his time to painting, working in a variety of different styles that tend to appear and reappear in his work. He always started with a clean slate to ensure that each painting was fresh. To Franck the structure of the painting was more important than the colour. As the years went by he worked on a larger scale preferring to paint on 4 foot by 4 foot canvases due to the onset of arthritis making working on smaller projects more difficult. Throughout Franck’s life his main interest was in the reaction of people to circumstances and to each other. His subject matters included mother and child, lovers, sleeping, fear, leaf structures, landscapes, protest and refugees. He was appalled by the number of refugees that were displaced around the world. Franck worked in a number of different media, his carvings were based on the human figure or on plant structures and the way leaves interact with each other. Franck’s large volume of work has been entrusted to his children to look after and to keep as a total collection. A few years ago he created his own web site: www.franckmoore.com, because he wanted others to see and comment on his work. Prior to his ninetieth birthday, a TV broadcast about his work was recorded at his studio. Franck liked to observe, he would have agreed that he was not a man of many words, although he did write a number of poems. Until a few weeks before his death he was a regular visitor to his local folk club. Franck leaves a son Munro, and daughters Karen, Tonia and Annette and grandchildren, Jason, Jessica, James, Henry, Tom, Marie, Tim, Rosie and Ross and great-grandchildren Alex and Helen. Munro June 04 |