On The Right Track

Artist Francis Sprout honors his origins in his work. Born and raised in a semi-rural section of Tucson, Ariz., he learned early to respect the desert. In the Sonora “everything will stick you,” he says. “The cactus, the stones, the rock outcroppings, the dirt and the sand. It’s all harsh, and the creatures will stick you, too.”

He cites such animals as the javelina, named for its spear-sharp tusks, scorpions, porcupines, rattlesnakes, skunks and Gila Monsters.

Sprout says that the textures and creatures that appear in his paintings, drawings and works in clay hearken back to that unforgiving place. Like the desert environment, Sprout’s art is a study in contradictions: rugged surfaces simultaneously entice and resist; symbols representing mystical states have dimensional, touchable forms; luminous effects, as fleeting as a heat mirage, are revealed on close inspection to be solid substances–metal leaf, metallic paint and glitter.

 Sprout knew that he wanted to be an artist and a teacher from an early age. As a boy he was always drawing. “I tried to document everything in my environment,” he says. The only child of working-class parents, his desire to draw was encouraged by his maternal grandmother. She was the “artsy” member of his extended family, he says. Although she herself did not draw (her talent lay in sewing and crocheting), she had a gift for observation and was able to encourage and direct him. All through grade school he was known as the class artist and says that he knew he was a pro when, in junior high school, a classmate parted with half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for one of his drawings.

Read the entire article in the March 2007 issue