Mark Francis is a Northern Irish painter based in London whose abstract works translate scientific and acoustic data into fields of colour, rhythm and optical movement. Born in Newtownards in 1962, he studied at St Martin’s School of Art and Chelsea School of Art. Since the 1990s, his paintings have drawn on astronomy, microscopy, mycology and sound, using bands, grids and pulsing forms to make otherwise invisible phenomena tangible. Their surfaces move between precision and ambiguity: structured systems seem to dissolve, while colour behaves like vibration. Francis has exhibited internationally, and his work is held in collections including Tate, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Arts Council England.
In 2026, Francis represents the Republic of San Marino at the 61st Venice Biennale with Sea of Sound, curated by Luca Tommasi and open from 9 May to 22 November at Tana Art Space. The pavilion presents a new group of large-scale paintings alongside Listening Field, his first moving-image work, created with filmmaker and animator Ian Cross and composer Marco Genovesi. Across the installation, colour, sound and repeated visual frequencies form a synaesthetic environment that asks viewers to shift between distance and close attention. The project extends Francis’s long investigation of art and science into film, treating perception as an active exchange between what is seen, heard and felt.