It was a turn-down day in February when I wandered into the Kaaterskill Fine Arts Gallery in Hunter, NY to check out their latest art show. Strolling around the room for a moment, two unusual landscape paintings caught my eye. Both were similar in their sense of playfulness and their bold originality. They were patterned paintings, much like patchwork quilts. At least, the landscape portions of the paintings were. What really caught my eye was the way the artist framed the landscape. These were no Thomas Cole-look-alikes (not that I have anything against Thomas Cole); they were more like de Chiricos, architectural studies devoid of people with landscapes painted in the background almost as an afterthought or maybe a snapshot. None of the other artwork had moved me but here I was impressed. I decided to find out who the artist was and much to my amazement, she was my next door neighbor!

Since I didn’t have far to go to find her, I waited until the next time I ran into her, which—oddly enough—was also at the Kaaterskill Fine Arts Gallery where I weasled my way into a small crowd as she was giving an impromptu talk about her art. Anxious to know how she came upon her original style, I asked her to describe her art.

“The preoccupation of my paintings over the last 20 years is using color and light to evoke a sense of time and place and using layering to develop patterns and composition,” she said. “I depict the real in the context of a Magical Realism that tells stories about places and things and I use color to mould forms. Architecture juxtaposed against landscapes is an enduring theme in my work.” As a lover of the fiction of Jorge Luis Borges and Isabel Allende, I was intrigued.

“My art has always been inspired by my travels,” she explained, dropping the subject before I’d had a chance to ask her where her travels had taken her. Not that it wasn’t obvious from her canvases that she’d at least been to France and Spain.

Francia has been an artist for over 30 years, she explained. She had only been my neighbor for a year or two, I feel I should explain.

I asked who some of her favorite artists were.

“Georgia O’Keeffe,” she said. “She was a very big influence on my early work, particularly my Rock and Land Formation series. Matisse and Kandinsky for their color and design and Frida Kahlo and Joseph Cornell for their intimate narratives.”

A lover of O’Keeffe, Kahlo, Matisse and Kandinsky myself, I was delighted with her answer.

I asked what had originally drawn her to art.

“The challenge to create a particularly unique individual vision of things I see and feel about the world and to develop the skills to implement my creative process.”

I was also curious about what brought her to the Catskills.

“The mountains,” she answered. “My husband, Bruce, and I always loved the mountains, whether it be in Switzerland, the Catskills, Italy, Colorado, New Hampshire or Vermont.”

My only thought was that the mountains are a magnet for so many different reasons, my own nonwithstanding.

Since her landscapes were very different than the ones I’m used to seeing in galleries in the mountains, I asked her if the landscape and architecture of the Catskills, so far from the mountain ranges of Europe, inspired her.

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “ It is so beautiful here, the light, the mountains, rolling hills and the patterned farmland are a great inspiration. I also like the old New England type buildings.”

Having heard that she’d taught art all over the world, I inquired about what drew her away from the solitary work of the artist towards sharing her art in this particular way with other people.

“I like to work with people and to give them the opportunity to develop and focus on the tools of the visual artist. I very much like the interaction with students and for them to tap into their creative selves,” she said, quietly.

I’m always curious about what artists do for fun since what they do to express themselves seems like so much fun already.

“Spending time with friends and family over dinner, going to art museums, concerts, being in beautiful places in nature and traveling.”

She couldn’t have picked a more beautiful place to live and paint than the Catskill High Peaks.

Come see Francia give a discussion of her work at Kaaterskill Fine Arts Gallery in Hunter Village Square (map) on Saturday, April 10 from 2-3 pm. For more information, visit www.catskillmtn.org.