Hello, I'm Francine Walker.

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Welcome to my studio.

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I have always been a maker.

Long before I knew what an artist was, I was drawn to the feeling of making something with my hands — the quiet satisfaction of taking an idea, a material, or a collection of fragments and giving them a new life.

For me, making is a conversation between myself and the material.

Metal has its own language. Fire changes it. Tools leave their marks. Stones carry their own history. Paint moves and settles in ways that cannot always be controlled. I have learned to listen to these things rather than impose too much upon them.

I am drawn to imperfection, texture and the traces of process. The small irregularities left by the hand. The evidence of fire. A surface that feels weathered rather than polished into submission. I believe there is beauty in things that reveal how they came to be.

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Jewellery

I work primarily in gold and gemstones, along with silver, bronze, brass, and copper.

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My jewellery is organic and tactile, often inspired by the raw and weathered forms found in nature. I love transforming metal through fire, hammering, carving, casting and fabrication, allowing the process itself to influence the final form.

I don't believe every edge needs to be filed square or every surface needs to be perfected. Sometimes the most beautiful part of a piece is the unexpected mark, the slight irregularity of a soft edge or the moment when I decide to stop.

There is a kind of freedom in knowing when enough is enough.

I am interested in jewellery that feels as though it has always existed — something found rather than manufactured. Something with a little history in it, even when it is brand new.

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Paintings

My paintings begin with my fascination of the natural world.

I am particularly drawn to pebbles, rock formations, creek-beds and water trickling over sand and earth — places where time is visible in layers, surfaces and erosion.

 

And then there is blue.

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I have always been captivated by blue and by the infinite possibilities contained within it. Pale, deep, muted, luminous, almost grey, almost green — a single colour can hold an entire landscape.

My paintings are not intended to reproduce nature. They are more like memories of it — abstract impressions of shapes, surfaces, movement and colour. I am interested in the feeling of standing beside water, looking down at stones beneath its surface, or noticing the quiet patterns created by something as simple as time and water moving over rock.

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The Thread Between Them

Although jewellery and painting may appear to live in different worlds, for me they are connected by the same impulse.

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I am drawn to the elemental.

 

Earth. Water. Fire. Metal. Stone.

 

I am fascinated by transformation — by what happens when something is altered by heat, pressure, time, movement or simply by the touch of a human hand.

Perhaps that is why I am happiest in the studio. It is a place where things are allowed to change.

 

A Life of Making

Creativity has been with me for as long as I can remember.

Growing up in Edmonton and Northern Alberta, I was always making something — drawing, building, experimenting and finding ways to turn the ideas in my head into something I could hold in my hands.

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I discovered painting at school and began making jewellery when I was eighteen. After completing my formal education in Interior Design and Interior Architecture at Mount Royal University in Calgary, I went on to study Jewellery and Small Object Design at Kootenay School of the Arts in Nelson, British Columbia.

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Today, I live and work in Kelowna, British Columbia, with my husband and our boys. My studio overlooks Okanagan Lake, where the changing light, water, stone and landscape continually find their way into my work.

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After a lifetime of making, I still find something almost magical about the process.

A piece of metal becomes a piece of jewellery.

A blank surface becomes a landscape.

Something that existed only in my imagination becomes something that can be held, worn, lived with.

And perhaps that is the greatest privilege of being an artist — to make something with your own hands and then have another person see enough of themselves in it to want to take it home.

 

I am still humbled by that.

 

And I am still making.

Francine