Sage Franz
As a child, my elementary school art teacher took the class on a field trip one year to the Art Institute of Chicago to see a Claude Monet retrospective. As the work was chronological throughout the exhibit, it helped me as a young artist to understand that the painter could simply paint the world exactly as they see it. I remember that lesson years later as in my own painting studio I can now pull from what I see out in the world and create a picture unique to my experience. In my painting, I seek to add beauty, joy, and peace to a world that seems often to not have enough of these qualities.
Though I have been painting with oil on canvas since 2017, it is in the last year that I have worked independently as a painter on commissions, selling my paintings online and at art markets throughout New Orleans including on Jackson Square. In February 2022 I developed and installed my first solo show of 15 oil paintings at a local gallery. My goals in the next 10 years as an artist include continuing to progress in my technical skill and studio practice with painting as well as becoming involved in showing and selling my work at more festivals around Louisiana and becoming a member of the Louisiana Craft Guild.
I draw inspiration from the natural world, my travels, and my connection to a true self. The painters that influence me the most at this point in my practice are self-taught often southern folk artists like Clementine Hunter and Purvis Young. Living in and experiencing the art and culture of New Orleans, LA, and the deep south over the last 17 years has had a large impact also on the style and choices I make in painting. I resonate deeply with a quote from Georgia O’Keeffe where she once said her goal as a painter was to ‘make the unknown known. By unknown I mean the thing that means so much to the person that he wants to put it down-clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand.’
