About the artist:

FRANCIE RICH paints portraits of people, dogs, cats and Barbies usually with her trademarked stunning gold-leaf backgrounds. Her latest series of the 33 Chilean Miners (each individually done on 5X5 inch canvases) takes her breath away. She is currently working on portraits of day-time-TV-judges and the New Orleans attorneys that advertise on the shows. She works from photos taken from the TV. She and artist husband, John Hodge also organize and lead European tours. They are a very clever couple, she allows him to be the little girl his mother wouldn’t let him be and he allows her to buy electronics and dig holes in the yard. Francie and John are featured in the July/August 2011 issue of Inside Northside Magazine. Click here to take a look. We are offering TRAVEL WITH A TWIST (with Corks N Canvas©) to ITALY IN MID OCTOBER. We are also offering Easter Break Tour to Italy, more information coming soon. My exuberance and zest for life is matched only by my bountiful lethargy, ennui, and abundant capacity for run-on sentences. I married my father and my husband married his crazy Aunt Sadie. The four of us are tripping the light fantastic even though two of us are dead. I am an anxious, insecure person with low self esteem but I have the ability to laugh at others. I teach art history and give private art classes. John makes pottery and teaches pottery. My work is a prime example, and only example, of Hypo Slavic Realism. The term Hypo-Slavic Realism was coined on 4 October 2008 by its founder and only known proponent, artist, Stanko Stribog (one of my alter-egos). Not one to pander to the masses, he is pandering to Eastern Europeans with under-active thyroids and odd hair. The work is non-denominational (meaning it offends all denominations) and has no political leanings to the right of left. This stylistic period of art relies on gold leaf and models whose vocabulary does not include the words “self esteem”. Stanko’s father had a mustache and liked Gypsy music. Stanko’s mother also had a mustache and for some odd reason detested accordions. His mother was classically trained in music and his maternal grandfather, from Belarus, was paper trained at night time. Stanko’s paternal grandfather, from Prague, had typical Slavic hair; it looked like St. Augustine grass that needed mowing. His work has offended the very people that he has painted, including high society, royalty, homosexuals, babies, media personalities, relatives, friends, black people, white people, Mexicans, and even dead people. He has been denounced and legally threatened. Basically these are paintings done while listening to Gypsy and Gypsy Punk music or watching TV. Mustaches have been added to works that haven’t sold, thereby breathing new life into the works. BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design, also studied at Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam MFA from California College of the Arts Artist-in-Residence Fellowship Grant, Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM Services to the Field Grant, National Endowment for the Arts and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans Visual Arts Fellowship, Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts,Artist Fellowship, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC Collections include: New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans Aquarium of the Americas, New Orleans, LA Prudential Life Insurance, Newark, NJ Ewing Gallery of Art, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN Laila and Thurston Twigg-Smith, Honolulu, HI Frederick R. Weisman, Los Angeles, CA Ann and Howard Barnett, New Orleans, LA The Residency Collection, Gallery 409, Roswell, NM Sheraton Hotel, New Orleans, LA McGlinchey, Stafford, Minz, Cellini and Lang, New Orleans, LA Ted Schachter, MGM-UA Telecommunications, Inc., Culver City, CA