A Mystery Tour
Urban scenes to travel along
Francesco Fontana is a contemporary watercolorist who's paintings gently emerged and dissipate on the paper. Watching him paint is to travel along on a magical mystery tour as his images emerge through the washes. Francesco delicately layers his color in hard and soft edge shapes and a completed painting leaves areas for the imagination to fill.
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Francesco creates atmospheric urban landscapes through strong architectural based translucent watercolors. His tonal paintings are a complex layering of washes with hard and soft edge brush strokes that define objects and subjects.
Images of urban street scenes emerge and float across the paper. There is a magic and energy to his paintings as he leaves much to the imagination by not defining all objects too clearly
Barbara Tapp, April 2016
Urban scapes emerge and float across the paper. There is a magic and energy to his paintings
My Artist Statement
Human business and the street spirit
My artistic vision is rooted in a bohemian nomadism, shaped by early life experiences in Palermo, Paris, and London. This background established an unbreakable bond between life and art, serving as a demanding school for the human figure—the central focus of my work.
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I am driven to capture the spirit of a place through the humanity pulsating in its lesser-known corners. This quest culminates in the Street Business series, which focuses on individuals earning their lives on the street. These figures are urban anchors, their presence acting as a profound social testimony and an expression of human dignity, mirroring my own early years as a street artist.
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I realize this vision in watercolor, which I utilize as a complete art form due to its technical demands. My technique uses transparency and glazing to activate luminosity and build complexity, capturing the raw intensity of contemporary reality. I invite the viewer to look past the architecture to find the quiet beauty, mystery, and resilience of the people often invisible to the hurried eye.