ARTIST

Ricardo Osmondo Francis was born September 8, 1976 in Houston,
Texas. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD,
and received a BFA in 1998 in painting.

His mixed media paintings and drawings are best described as lush
surrealistic narratives that often depict the social constructs of racial
identity, masculinity, economics, and the complexity of human existence
through mesmerizing contemplative portraits, still life, and abstract
compositions.

He is a founding member of BLAFTCO, an alternative visual art group
where Francis first began conceptualizing and developing large scaled art
projects and art exhibits. Since 1992, he has created a wide variety of
community based, innovative multi-media projects and exhibitions such as
The New Museum (1994), Public Opinion (1996), and All Sizes/Real
People (1997). In 2000 Mr. Francis developed his own visual arts company,
called Apanamae Productions. At that time the artist produced solo exhibits
for his own work such as “Exhibit A” (2002) and “New sKIN” (2003). Also as
a writer and director, he has produced a number of major multi-media
performance projects, some of which include “Que Hora Es?” (2002) And
“The Anonymous Life” (2005).

At the present time Francis is the Gallery Director of LeonidesArts NY, an
artist run multi-media visual arts organization dedicated to presenting
contemporary art exhibitions and/or public art projects that reflects a variety
of distinct artistic styles, themes, disciplines, and cultural experiences
outside of the conventional art gallery tenet.