Artist Statement

I am Francine Norma Denton Lerner known as Mrs. F. Schachter. I was born in Manhattan in 1935 and spent my youth in the Bronx where I lived with my grandparents who were both artists. They inspired me to paint. I attended Hunter College, the Art Student League, and the Bank Street School. At Hunter College I studied with Robert Motherwell and William Baziotes. I worked as a textile designer and attended school at night.

In 1956 (November 16 at eight p. m.) I met Gustav Schachter, an aspiring professor, and we were married in February 1958. We spent our honeymoon in Europe and visited Paris. There I was to paint a watercolor I call Paris.

In 1959 Gustav was awarded a Fulbright fellowship. I attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where I was granted a scholarship. There I studied painting, etching and engraving. Gustav was busy researching his doctoral thesis.

In 1964, our lovely daughter Livia Rebecca was born. Soon after Gustav’s first book, The Italian South was published by Random House and dedicated to Livia. In 1965 we moved to Boston where I was active in the art world and participated in many professional shows. We traveled to Europe often in connection with Gustav’s work.

In 1968 we spent one year in Ankara Turkey, Gustav was a consultant for OECD. I was busy completing the oil paintings the Orient Express, and Anatolia. I painted an oil for Livia’s Pakistani study group a local grammar school. The children painted the walls white and hung up the colorful painting Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea, silver buckles on his knee. It is quite cheerful. I hope that the following decades of children that attend the school will love it. When I returned to Boston, I painted Susanna and the Butterflies inspired by Livia’s friend Susanna who worked magic with butterflies.

In 1972 our wonderful baby boy Levanto Gershon was born and we spent Gustav’s sabbatical leave in Rome where I painted the large oil entitled Piazza Navona It was crated back to Boston. This was the beginning of annual European summers. In 1982, a major show of mine held at Galleria Agostiniana in Piazza del Popolo, Rome was well received. My next European one-artist show was in Switzerland in 1992. Through the nineties I concentrated on painting in oil and some in acrylics. We have spent the last ten winters and summers in Europe, which continues to inspire me. Our grown up daughter, Livia married Christopher Kahl. They have two daughters, Sarah 12 and Madeline, 8. They live nearby in Brookline. Our son. Levanto married Shelley Hamilton and they live in California.

My work is figurative. It reflects the many ways I perceive the written word. For example, Susanna was a child who loved butterflies and enjoyed watching them fly. I painted Susanna as I remember her with her butterflies. Only the painted picture, I believe, can express the imagery that words evoke in the human mind. The images are reflective as well as introspective. Paintings capture the passing of time: the past, the present and the future

Painting and architecture, more than any other invention known to people, have brought us beyond the primates. It is the basis of human civilization. Remember the visions of cave paintings where ancient artists believed that they would capture their prey by magical paintings. They are delicate but the have lasted through these many centuries.

As I traverse pages I see stories in individual letters and words, and I am impelled to transfer these images I see to canvas and sometime to paper. These images are interwoven into the passing of time that brings great joy and sadness.

Many of the images I create come to me from stories told to me by friends and relatives. The passing of a moon overhead completes the night sky or the passing of a ballerina dancing among wisps of clouds. Time passes away when I concentrate on the image I am painting. Across the faint line that stretches taught between the past, the present and the future are images that rise to my imagination.

In my earlier as well as in my present works, I have been more prone to create images in which the people and places were timeless. Interwoven is the written word. Stories are bounding out of each corner of the canvas. In general my paintings are more akin to painted short stories and novels.

Education

Hunter College of New York
Art Students League of New York
Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome, Italy
Bank Street Graduate School, New York

Exhibits:
1966 Newbury Festival, Boston, MA
1969 Brookline Art Association
1970 Cambridge Art Association
1970 Brookline Art Association
1971Cambridge Art Association, Prize Show
1971 Cambridge Art Association, Environment Our Concern
1971 Fitchburg Museum, Rental
1973 Brookline Art Association
1974 Belmont Massachusetts Art Festival
1978 Boston Visual Arts Union, Art in Contrast
1980 Boston Visual Arts Union, New Members Open Show
1980 Boston University Art Gallery “On the Verge” (9 Boston painters)
1981 Cambridge Art Association, “Fantasy in Oil”
1981 Cambridge Art Association, Rental Show
1981 The Copley Society of Boston Members Exhibition
1981 Boston Visual Arts Union, Members Show
1981 Cambridge Art Association, “Mini-Maxi”
1982 Boston Visual Arts Union, “The Human Condition”
1982 Rome, Italy, Galeria Agostiniana (one artist show)
1982 Boston University Art Gallery Portraits
1983 Cambridge Art Association Judging Panel for new members
1985 Brookline Council of Arts and Humanities, Exhibition
1985 The Cultural Center of Brookline: A Multi-Media Exhibit
1987 Gallery Henry IV “It Seems Like Tomorrow”, Cambridge, MA
1988 Gallery Henry IV, “Absence of Color,” Cambridge MA
1989 Edison-Kaplan private show
1992 Chateau de Chenaux, Estavayer Le Lac, FR. CH.
2000 Arts Union Group Show, Neuchatel
1995-2002 Galerie Municipal, de Yverdon Le Bain

Employment:
1985-1986 Producer of Serial Show "Neighbors" for Cablevision of Brookline
1982-1983 Summer Lecturer, Italian Art Appreciation, Northeastern University
Bolzano Campus
1960-1963 Teacher, New York City School District
1972-1973 Lecturer of Art Appreciation OSR, Rome, Italy
1955-1959 Fabric Designer, French Fabrics, New York,

Honors:
1959-1960 Accademia di Belle Arti, Italy, Fellowship,
1970 First Prize, Cambridge Art Association for Anatolia, oil
1971 Cambridge Association Award for The Midas Touch (sculpture)
1971-1972 Selected for Ten-artist Exhibit, Cambridge, MA
1981 Cambridge Art Association, Board of Directors
1982-1983 Cambridge Art Association Award for Festa Dei Noialtri
1983 Cambridge Art Association, Juror
1984 Cambridge Art Association, Co-chairman, Exhibit Looking at People
1984 Brookline Arts Council
1985 Arts Coordinator for Brookline Cultural Center
1985 Brookline Cable Television, Award
1985 Council of Arts and Humanities of Brookline, Award

Commissions:
1970 Northeastern University, The Horowitz Dollar, The Military Industrial Complex, 1971 Economic Equilibrium, oils
1977 Northeastern University, College of Criminal Justice, murals
1970-2005 Various private sales and commissions of etchings, watercolors, and oils