Francesca Woolson ’26

Francesca Woolson is a painter from Western New York, currently attending Maine College of Art and Design – with an anticipated graduation in 2026. Her focus is in surrealist figurative and portrait work, with oil paint being her primary medium because of its ability to juxtapose careful control and erraticness. Woolson explores domination, horror in relation to cinema and performance, the subconscious, ambiguity, and the purgatorial through her figuration. Carefully rendered images are combined with immediate brushstrokes to create an emotional reality mimicking the subject’s state. Contorted and transformed figures are used to show a perpetual discomfort – causing a subconscious discomfort in the viewer and questioning their complicity.