Francesca Mollett (born 1991) is a British abstract painter known for her richly layered canvases exploring light, surface, and liminal space. She lives and works in London.
Early life and education
Mollett was born in 1991 in Bristol. She graduated from Wimbledon College of Arts in 2014 with a Bachelor of Arts in Painting. She then studied at the Royal Drawing School in London in 2015, where she developed a sustained interest in abstraction. In 2020, she received her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London. That same year she was awarded the Aidan Threlfall Award for Young Painters.
Practice
Mollett makes abstract paintings that react to space and context. Working primarily in oil on calico canvas and linen, her compositions evolve through a process of extracting and transforming observations, as she analyses the "shifting passages of paint" and the "tension between luminosity and solidity". Her technique ranges from impasto accumulations applied with a palette knife to thinned paint smeared and rubbed across the surface, and large sweeping strokes of colour; preparatory drawings in charcoal, graphite, and watercolour inform her compositions.
Her work is often inspired by sites where light behaves in unusual ways — ancient wells, grottoes, tunnels — as well as by biological phenomena such as phosphorescent moss and the movement of moths. Literature is another persistent influence: emotional events within fiction mediate Mollett's perception of the physical world, particularly when a character's encounter deconstructs their expected reality and expands their sense of connection to their surroundings.
Mollett has described her aim as creating "an image of looking — elements can appear almost recognisable and then dissolve." Critics have noted her work's entanglement of iridescent colour with expressive impasto, and its quality of holding the viewer at a threshold between the legible and the abstract. The Art Newspaper wrote in 2024 that her paintings seem to possess a singular "it factor", marking her as one of the more compelling figures in contemporary British abstraction.
Career
After graduating from the Royal College of Art, Mollett exhibited in the group show London Grads Now at the Saatchi Gallery, London, in 2020. Her first solo exhibition, Wild Shade, was held at Informality Gallery, London, in 2021. A series of international solo exhibitions followed in rapid succession: The Moth in the Moss at Taymour Grahne Projects, London (2022); Spiral Walking at Baert Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Low Sun at Micki Meng, San Francisco (2023); Halves at GRIMM, Amsterdam (2023); Noon at Pond Society, Shanghai (2023); Corso at GRIMM, New York (2024); Elsewhere at The Warehouse, Dallas (2025); and Annual Honesty at Modern Art, London (2025).
She has also featured in significant group exhibitions, including The Kingfisher's Wing curated by Tom Morton at GRIMM, New York (2022); Considering Female Abstractions at the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023); New British Abstraction at CICA, Vancouver (2023); and A Room Hung With Thoughts: British Painting Now, curated by Tom Morton, at the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2025).
In 2022 she was represented by GRIMM Gallery (with spaces in Amsterdam, London, and New York), and by Micki Meng in San Francisco. In 2025, she joined Modern Art, the London gallery run by Stuart Shave.
Collections
Mollett's work is held in a number of public and institutional collections, including:
Dallas Museum of Art Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX He Art Museum, Foshan, China Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Miami, FL K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong Kröller-Müller Museum, The Netherlands Kunstmuseum, The Hague Pond Society, Shanghai Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX The Roberts Institute of Art, London University of Oxford, St Hilda's College Art Collection
Selected solo exhibitions
Year Title Venue 2021 Wild Shade Informality Gallery, London 2022 The Moth in the Moss Taymour Grahne Projects, London 2022 Spiral Walking Baert Gallery, Los Angeles 2023 Low Sun Micki Meng, San Francisco 2023 Halves GRIMM, Amsterdam 2023 Noon Pond Society, Shanghai 2024 Corso GRIMM, New York 2025 Elsewhere The Warehouse, Dallas 2025 Annual Honesty Modern Art, London
Awards
Aidan Threlfall Award for Young Painters, 2020
Publications
References
External links Francesca Mollett at Modern Art, London Francesca Mollett at GRIMM Gallery Francesca Mollett at the Royal Drawing School