Justin Francavilla

Justin Francavillas project titled Dead Flowers, consists of multiple ink drawings and intaglio prints ranging in scale from 22×30” to 55×96”. The drawings and prints continue to explore 'Francavilla’s trademark aggressive style of working while maintaining a fine and delicate line.' For this collection Francavilla takes inspiration from his garden with dead flowers that take on figurative traits. 'The flowers seem to be at war with each other but maintain an odd sexual quality.'

Artist Statement: “I primarily make large scale ink on paper drawings.  They fall into a couple of separate but related categories, Men, Flowers and landscapes. All of my work is about survival, the inherent competition that that entails and my underlying love and hope for humanity.The landscapes fall under the title: Testimonies Against Obliteration.  They are comprised of several parts, dying plant life, struggling human life and the remains of our civilized society littering the landscape.The 21st century is entering into a post-human period where our humanity is losing out to our increasingly mechanized digital world. These drawings explore our chaotic world of speed, information, status, power and the waste that’s left in our wake. The drawings often evolve from one vignette to the next until a complete scene has been created. The aging, dying and dead flowers found throughout my work explore the simultaneous stillness of dying and the explosive violence of rebirth. These drawings are meticulous meditations on existence.  They show the beauty of aging and they are celebrations of living.The series of men under the title: I Said You FCKN Die! Are drawings of competing capitalists. They are pictures of internal struggles seeking to denounce violence and the aggressive nature of man. I work almost entirely with an old fashioned nib dipped in ink because I enjoy the purity the black line on the page.  With no mechanized parts between the ink from my fingers meeting the page I am able to deal directly with every fractious grain of the paper. It is a love to create beautiful images that moves me to work this way. There are no illusions within an ink drawing, every line the hits the paper is left there, it cannot be erased and the inks’ blackness cannot be blackened any further. The evolution of the drawing is transparent, there is nowhere to hide and any lies that I make are left in plain sight. The indelible power of ink drawings resides in this truth telling ability allowing me to create these testimonies to our humanity.”

I have loved his work for the way that he pays exceptional attention to every last detail. Francavilla also has a talent for turning the ‘ugly’ and ‘ignored’ into showing so beautifully detailed that you can’t help but look at every line and stroke that gone into detail. You can clearly tell he has spent a lot of time and attention to these magnificent pieces of work – you can see that his heart and soul has gone into every line drawn. But, not only does he create drawings that are beautiful to look but he creates a hidden narrative within this work. With this drawing in particular I feel like there is a romance story going on between these flowers – almost like the Romeo and Juliet of the natural world. Perhaps Justin Francavilla is trying to communicate that message that we should look after our environment and the plants within it. The fact that I could personify these flowers to have human emotions suggests that Francavilla is saying that nature is no different to us – it has to fight for survival – therefore we should look after the environment like we would look after each other.