I was born in New York City to a father who was in the US Foreign Service and a mother who was an army nurse. With my parents and three siblings I was raised abroad in Tehran, Bonn, Paris, Karachi, London and Geneva.

I attended the various local schools of each country and chose to attend the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University where I received my first BA, in South Asian History. After graduation, I moved to Boston where I accepted a position as a market researcher in a publishing firm. I then moved to York, Pa, with my mew husband, where I trained and worked as a regional planner with an environmental consulting firm. All the while I immersed myself in drawing and painting during my free time in the evenings and weekends. Finally, when I approached my fortieth birthday I returned to college to formally study my first love, the making of art and its history. I graduated from Franklin and Marshall College with a BA in Studio Art and History of Art (Phi Beta Kappa) and Bryn Mawr with an MA in History of Art. Together these institutions gave me some of the finest times of my life and indeed changed the course of my life. They gave me the support and intellectual structure to call myself an artist.

My work is realist in form but surreal in substance. That is, I work to make meanings that are 'read' beyond what the image literally represents. I use words from both poetry and prose pieces as beginning points for my oil paintings. I work in several genres, still life, figurative and skyscapes.

I exhibit quite regularly at galleries in our region of south central Pennsylvania as well as currently at a gallery in Philadelphia, The Artists' House. Several corporations and museums have collected my work which is also found in many private collections.

For more detail please refer to my site: www.francesdonnellywolf.com