"As It Happens l" by Francks Deceus

18 x 14 inches, hand pulled lithograph on paper, edition 15/20 -- unframed

Francks Francois Décéus continues to emerge as one of the important young painters of his generation. Born in Haiti, Décéus and his family moved to Brooklyn, New York when he was nine years old. It wasn’t until he graduated from Long Island University with a degree in Sociology that he turned to making art as a career.

Over a seventeen-year career, his work has marched chronologically from his childhood in Haiti, through his immersion into his new urban community as an immigrant, and recently, to his meditations on a conceptual vision of humanity. He has always been more interested in exploring themes and issues than in making definitive statements or creating a visual language with his art, and his work resonates with political and sociological content.

Stylistically his work incorporates many of the influences and aesthetic forms of the 40’s and 50’s visual artists like William Johnson and Jacob Lawrence, and reverberates with some of the artistic strains of his native Haiti. His modernist style combines figurative, abstract and layered elements and relies heavily on a simplification of form and function. His work is characterized by a semiotic economy, minimalist use of imagery and a deliberately limited palette range within series of work.