Frances Hatch developed her plein air practice not only to make work outdoors but to involve the materials she finds around her in the landscape, collecting earth, rocks, minerals and litter to use as her palette. Wild fruit juices, puddle mud and raindrops bespeckle her sketchbooks. Armed simply with paper and a portable toolkit containing some gouache, watercolour or acrylic paint and a binding medium, Frances heads off to the beach often by moonlight to create her response to the place at the time she finds it.

Frances Hatch studied visual art at Cambridge, Aberystwyth and Goldsmiths and has an MA in printmaking from Wimbledon College of Art. She has always loved to paint outdoors. She has been a senior tutor at West Dean College since 1995. The strength and confidence of her work has improved steadily since her trip to Antarctica in 2005. That same year a Research Bursary from DVA/ExLab supported her study of the history and craft of making and consolidating pigments. Her paintings include the pigments she makes on site from materials she finds that day. Frances has published books about her projects and contributed to other books both as an illustrator and practitioner.

She has exhibited throughout the UK including London and has shown regularly at Sladers Yard since 2015. Frances was awarded the Shenzhen International Watercolour Biennial Prize at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) exhibition at the Mall Galleries 2016: ‘An award to encourage innovation and experimentation in contemporary watermedia.’ In 2020 she curated a show of her paintings with ceramics by world-class potters entitled The Common Ground at the Crafts Study Centre, Farnham.