Frances Hynes Narrative Biography – 2020
The artist has a lengthy exhibition history beginning with the 1974 New Talent Festival, sponsored by eighteen New York galleries to provide venues for unknown artists. Poindexter Gallery participated and introduced her paintings. A solo exhibition at Poindexter Gallery followed. Since then she has had over 40 solo exhibitions. These include: The Institute for Contemporary Art, P.S.1 (now called MoMA PS1) in Long Island City, NY and nine solo shows at Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York. Other museum exhibitions include: the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY (2020); New Britain Museum of American Art, CT; Springfield Museum of Art, OH; Wright Museum of Art, WI; Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art, FL; and a 10 year survey at Ogunquit Museum of American Art, ME.
Frances Hynes had six one-person exhibitions at June Kelly Gallery, New York between 1991 and 2017. A one-person show of watercolors, All Kinds of Weather was presented at Phyllis Stigliano Gallery, Brooklyn, NY in cooperation with the June Kelly Gallery in 2010. And in 2015, Phyllis Stigliano Art Projects presented Frances Hynes: animal works: paintings from the early 1980’s at Moe’s Meat Market, a gallery. A catalog was produced for that show. Hynes also shows at the Elizabeth Moss Gallery in Falmouth, Maine. Dan Kany in The Portland Press Herald reviewed her 2018 exhibition, Marking Time: Of Land and Of Sea at Elizabeth Moss Gallery.
Recent group exhibitions include three invitationals at the National Academy of Design, New York; and two at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. And her work continues to travel internationally through the Art in Embassies Program, based in Washington, D.C. And in 2020 her drawing House, Whale and Handprints was included in DRAWING CHALLENGE VII at Jason McCoy Gallery, New York.
From 1976 to 1978 Frances Hynes participated in the legendary National Workspace Program at the Institute for Art and Urban Resources (now MoMA PS 1) in Long Island City, NY. She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Grant for her painting and The Edwin Palmer Memorial Prize for Painting from the National Academy of Design, New York.
She was a resident artist at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and the Cill Rialaig Project both in Ireland; Edna St. Vincent Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and others. She has served as a visiting artist/professor at Burren College of Art, County Clare, Ireland; Lahti Institute of Fine Arts, Finland; Memphis College of Art, TN; Central Michigan University and Illinois State University among others. She taught at Savannah College of Art and Design, GA, C.W. Post College, NY and was adjunct associate professor at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) until 2013.
Her painting is represented in numerous museum collections including: the Albany Institute of History and Art, NY; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; Portland Museum of Art, ME; Newark Museum, NJ; Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, CT; New Britain Museum of American Art, CT; Springfield Museum of Art, OH; Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; and the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ. Corporate collections include: AT&T, Alliance Capitol Management and Ariel Capitol Management among others. In 1984, a commission was completed for Bellevue Hospital in NY.
The artist lives in Queens, NY and was a founding member of Independent Studios I, a group of artists that maintained a cooperative workspace for 38 ½ years from 1978 until 2016 in Long Island City, NY. Frances Hynes received an MA from New York University and a BA from St. John’s University. At New York University she performed in Outskirts, a happening choreographed by Robert Rauschenberg. The artist also studied at the Art Students League in Woodstock, NY and the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy.
