DEcember 2022

Featured Artist - Fran Krukar

Please introduce yourself and describe your background

My name is Fran Krukar and I’m a watercolorist.  As a Military wife, I took art and college classes in many places, graduating from the University of New Mexico in 1980. Some years later, I took watercolor classes from Dorothy Voorhees and many workshops sponsored by the New Mexico Watercolor Society.

What is your earliest memory of creating art?

At the age of nine or ten, I used some clay-like material we had to play with into a fluted bowl.

Describe your primary medium and why you’ve chosen it for your artwork

Watercolor is my only medium.  Watercolor chose me rather than me choosing it since it is the only medium that keeps my allergies happy.

What other media have you used?

Clay for about ten years until my allergies said enough of that.

Describe your artwork in 10 words or less

They are traditional, sometimes contemporary still lives and realistic portraits.

What inspires your work?

The challenge of portraits, or capturing brief moments of time and my new interest of painting interstate highway intersections all inspire many ideas.

If you could spend the day with any artist, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

That would be Vincent Van Gogh.  He had a hard life but never lost his determination to paint.  The brushstrokes in thick paint show so much confidence.  The way he sees his subject matter of ordinary people and things we see every day and take for granted, such as a vase of flowers, then makes us see them in a totally new way is mind-blowing.

Do you show your work commercially?  If so, where? 

The work is shown at Yucca Gallery, the Corrales Studio Tour and local exhibits including Masterworks, New Mexico Watercolor Society, New Mexico Art League and State Fair.

What is something most people don’t know about you? My husband sailed a catamaran in our younger years.

What advice would you offer younger artists just beginning their art careers?

Paint what you love and never give up.