1949 Born in Durban
1967-70 University of Natal, BAFA
1971-72 University of Natal, Post-Graduate Honours Degree
1975 University of Cape Town, University Education Diploma
1979 British Council Visitor's Programme
Settled in London
1979-80 Goldsmiths' College, London, Post-Graduate Diploma in Art and Design
1986-88 Royal college of Art, London (MA Painting)
1988-89 British School at Rome
1983-2017 Painting trips to Greece, Egypt, Italy, Istanbul, Australia, USA, Beijing, France, Thailand, India, Hong Kong, Spain, Portugal, Tunisia, Malaysia, Morocco.
Awards and commissions
1987 Basil H. Alkazzi Travel Scholarship to Greece
1988 Rome Scholarship in Painting
1994 Commission for a 10m painting for the Prudential PLC
200? Commission for Rosie Hoskins, Sydney
2005 Commission for Mo Teitelbaum, France: Mategot's Chairs
2009 Commission for June Cope, Sydney
2014 Cover, Book of poetry, The Wind’s Embrace by Jeremy Young
Solo Exhibitions
1989 Artist of the Day (Selected by Jennifer Durrant) Flowers East, London
1989 Creaser Gallery, London
1991 (Jan) Anne Berthoud Gallery, London
1991 (Oct) Crane Gallery, London
1992 Gallery 7, Hong Kong
1993 Crane Kalman Gallery, London
1994 Doncaster Museum, England
1995 Crane Kalman Gallery London
1996 Aldeburgh Festival, England
1998 Crane Kalman Gallery, London
2001 Crane Kalman Gallery, London
2004 Crane Kalman Gallery, London
2007 Crane Kalman Gallery, London
2011 Crane Kalman Gallery, London
2014 Kensington Place, London (presented in partnership with the Rowley Gallery)
2020 Paintings from the edge of the Ku-Ring-Gai, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, Sydney (E-catalogue only due to Covid-19)
Selected Group Exhibitions
1982 'British Drawing', Hayward Gallery, London
Sainsbury's 'Images for Today', Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield and National Tour
1983,1984, 1990 Contemporary British Watercolours, Bankside Gallery, London
The Leicestershire Exhibition
1987 The London Group Show, Royal College of Art and touring
Artists who studied with Peter de Francia, Camden Art Centre, London
Cleveland (UK) 8th International Drawing Biennale
The Day Book Picture Show, Smith's Galleries, London
Current Work, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, London
'A Foot in Every Direction', Creaser Gallery
The London Influence", Slaughterhouse Gallery, London
1988, 1989, 1990 Contemporary Art society Market, London
1989 'Mostra 1989' the British School at Rome
The London Group Show, Royal College of Art, London
1990 Rome Scholars 1980-1990 RCA, London
Group Show, Midlands Contemporary Arts
'In Celebration of Colour', Moving Gallery at the Slaughter House
ICAF Olympia & Cologne
1992 ARCO Madrid (Anne Berthoud Gallery) Whitechapel Open Studios
1992-2002 FIAC Paris (Crane Kalman Gallery)
1992 Design Art, Dubai
1992 'Water COLOUR', Curwen Gallery, London
1994 'Abstractions' Art First, London
1995 The London Group Biennale
1995-96 Absolut Secret, Royal College of Art
1996 Glasgow Art Fair (Davies & Tooth)
1991-2011 The London Art Fair, Islington
1996-2011 British Art Fair, London
1993, 1994, 1995, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010 The Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition, London
2009 Land and Light, Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney
2010 Something Personal, Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney
About Flowers, Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney
Think Big, Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney
KwaZulu University Trust Exhibition, St Pauls Gallery, London
2011 Watercolour, Tate Gallery, London
2012 British Art Show 20/21 (Crane Kalman Gallery)
at the Royal College of Art, London
Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition,
Mall Galleries, London and touring
Green and Stone Charity Picture Auction, London
2013 Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition,
Mall Galleries, London and touring
2014 London Art Fair, Islington (Crane Kalman Gallery)
Works on Paper, Imperial College, London
2015 London Art Fair, Islington (Crane Kalman Gallery)
The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London, guest artist, invited by Nicole Farhi
RCA SECRET 2015, RCA, London
2016 London Art Fair, Islington (Crane Kalman Gallery)
RCA SECRET, London
CHAOS, an exhibition curated by Nicole Farhi
2017 London Art Fair, Islington (Crane Kalman Gallery)
RCA SECRET, London
2018 SPLASH Bankside Gallery, London
RCA SECRETS, London
2019 London Art Fair, Islington (Crane Kalman Gallery)
Collections
Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York
Museum of Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland
Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield
Prudential Corporation PLC, London
European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, London (Private Collection)
Art FX Ltd, London
Global Art Ltd, Switzerland
Leicestershire Educational Art Collection
And private collections in England, USA, Germany, France, Holland, Hong Kong, Italy.
Selected Bibliography
Robert Clark, Arts Guardian (1988); Michael Field, Star (1988); Peter de Francia, Cat. 'Current Work', Graves Art Gallery (1988); Maria Vaizey, Sunday Times (1988); Andrew Lambirth, The Artist (1988); Lynne Cooke, Cat. 'Mostra 1988' British School at Rome; Enzo Bilardello, Corriera Della Sera, Rome (1988); Maria Dvojkovic, Openings, Rome (1989); Emmanuel Cooper, Time Out (No. 1002 1989); Andrew Hughes, Arts Review (Vol XLI No.22 1989); Mary-Rose Beaumont, Arts Review (Vol XLIII No. 2); Sister Wendy Beckett, Galleries (Oct 91); Christopher Andrae, Christian Science Monitor (9 Mar 1992); Mary Rose Beaumont, Arts Review (Vol ); Heather Waddell, Artline (Winter 91/92); Giles Auty, Spectator (12 Oct 1992); Nigel Cameron, South China Morning Post (8 Dec 1992); Artention (No.30, Nov 1992); South African Times (Oct 1993); Art Review (Oct 1993); Spectator (Apr 1995).
Radio and TV
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Seven Young Artists, BBC2 TV, 1988
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Radio Today, Hong Kong, Nov 1992
Excerpts from Critiques
'Jenny Franklin is not an artist to lean on tradition: her gift is a strong one, personal in motivation and resolution, with a character of its own. There is no suggestion in her work of academic paraphrase: its vitality and self-assurance is obvious. An academic artist always coarsens or diminishes whatever is selected from tradition but Franklin's powerfully authentic work merely takes a historic range of formal possibilities – the way landscape painting can look, is permitted to look now – as a composite point of departure. What she makes of it has a fresh individuality of its own, rooted within the poetic reality of her own experience in time, place and season. Her composite images go beyond topography but contain a strong sense of the spirit of place, wherever that may be, and the transmutations of that spirit in terms of her own character with its own range of mood and feeling.'
(Bryan Robertson, Catalogue Introduction, 1991)
'In fact, [Jenny Franklin] was born in South Africa, studied there and in England and has since travelled extensively. Last year the artist was living in Australia during the time of the bush fires. Although events and places influence her work indirectly at most, one senses that physical experiences re-emerged transmogrified into her poetic essays in colour. The chromatic range of her abstractions from organic forms is consistently upbeat and often uplifting, existing in the realm of the spirit more than that of physical fact. Some of Franklin's new works are startling and quite beautiful. I liked especially those with long, horizontal formats.'
(Giles Auty, The Spectator, 8 April 1995)
'Jenny Franklin, who was born in South Africa in 1949, has lived in Australia and in Italy, as a Rome Scholar, and has travelled on painting trips to Greece, Egypt, Turkey and the east and west coast of America, China and France. If this sounds restless and nomadic, the deduction is false. Her journeying seems to be the product of an ardent need to experience, above all to experience space and light. Her native country, however murky its politics, has the clearest and purest light in the world, and something of that radiant distancing is shared with us in Franklin's work.
It is landscape art become abstract: landscape of the spirit, opening up to an awareness of sheer physical beauty which is the only contact offered us to attain the non-physical. In an age when beauty is a dangerous word, and young artists are careful to protect themselves by irony and even cynicism, this austere acceptance of beauty and disciplined eagerness to embrace it is what makes Franklin's work so profoundly satisfying.'
(Sister Wendy Beckett)