There’s a colorful installation going on at the Hotel Casa Del Mar and it’s largely due to painter and installation artist, Shingo Francis.
“I’m going back to my roots, creating art specifically with the Hotel Casa Del Mar in mind,†explains Francis, who has decorated the lobby and library with festive Chinese lanterns and the windows overlooking the beach with colored with transparent hues, resembling stain glass.
Francis’ works traditionally deal with cultural and social boundaries, and explore the psychological and emotional space created from a multi-cultural background and environment.
The talented artist was born in Santa Monica, California in 1969. At the age of three he moved to Japan with his Japanese mother, and went to an international school in Tokyo until the age of thirteen.
He subsequently moved back to California to live with his father, Sam Francis—a successful American painter and printmaker—during the academic year, spending the summer and winter breaks in Tokyo. Ironically, Francis didn’t think he wanted to be a visual artist. He was planning to study writing, but after his first year, opted to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“My father’s studio when I was a little kid was like a big playground. He gave us a lot of freedom to do what we wanted to do, to use his materials and go at it. Seeing him being very free was a big influence. He was also very interested in dreams, and held the inner-life as important as our outer life. He always encouraged me to pay attention to my dreams and what was going on within. As a result my work comes from a very subjective place.â€
In 1992 Francis received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pitzer College in Claremont, California. His work, which ranges from painting, drawing and photography, has a minimal and abstract approach to the landscape with an emphasis on geographic scale and light.
The range of color Francis decided upon for the window treatment at Hotel Casa Del Mar was carefully selected. “I wanted to get a spectrum of warmth and a spectrum of cool—the warmth being the yellow to red; the cool, being the light blue to turquoise to a darker blue. The purple represents the loop. All colors come back to purple. Blue goes to purple, red goes to purple and when you combine red and blue they become purple,†explains Francis.
The reason he started with light in the center of this design? “To return to hope. You want to start with the positive,†says Francis, “begin with the light.â€
When asked about his intention for the design, Francis says, “I’d like for residents and guests to come away with whatever emotion they feel through color, and of course a joy of being on the beach. The colors I’ve used should enhance that joy. Wherever they are in their lives, if they need something to lift them up from sorrow, this installation should give them hope. If anything, I want them to come away with a sense of hope.â€
Artwork will be on display through November 15.
