Growing up in Denver, Fran had 20 aunts and uncles plus their wives, husbands and all of her cousins, which meant her young social life was limited to family. Her childhood was spent on a farm, as her father (who practiced law in the city) thought it was the good life... with horses, cows, chickens, a vegetable garden, and a do not touch rose garden. Among her favorite things as a child were her weekly ballet lessons, riding horses bareback, swimming in ponds, climbing trees, collecting rocks, and coming home with flowers from the neighborhood's greenhouse trash bin. She didn't have many toys, but does still own the one doll she was given.
In school Fran loved everything creative. As a junior in university her father learned of her art classes and told her he would not pay tuition for an art major - education mattered. So she majored in business, married, raised children and did her painting in the wee hours. In 1991 after running a travel agency for 10 years, she sold the business and knew it was now or never, a time to get serious about her almost lost love for art. Fran then took classes at the Art Student's League of Denver, attended workshops, entered juried shows, went after gallery representation and became active in a small plein air group, as well as pursuing abstract expression painting in the studio.
Fran's husband is wonderfully supportive; she says she feels "fortunate and am convinced that the best life is the one you love, forever discovering, striving and inspiring."
