Presenting Featured Artist Fran Decker

Fran at KWAC with Roof Top Cafe painting

Fran at Key West Art Center with Roof Top Cafe painting

Fran Decker’s colorful acrylic paintings capture the flavor of the Florida Keys. Fran is a Plein Air painter, meaning she likes to paint on site, sitting in front of her subject matter. Fran feels this helps her incorporate something special and indefineable, the essence of the scene, into her painting. Fran paints a variety of subjects, from conch houses and Key West scenes to land and seascapes, flora and fauna and anything else that catches her eye. Fran’s paintings reflect her favorite things about the Keys.

Fran painted her first ‘good” painting at age 12 and decided acrylics were her medium of choice at age 14. Fran is a mostly self taught painter, but has studied with local artists Jim Salem, Judi Bradford, Michael Haykin and Sanford Birdsey. She loves to plein air paint and was a founder of the Wednesday group in town. She recently painted the Roof Top at the KWAC Plein Air Event and the San Carlos at the Tennessee Williams Panting Challenge. Her work can be found at Frangipani Gallery, SoDu Gallery and The key West Art Center, as well as her website, www.frandecker.com.

Fran vacationed in the Keys in the 70’s, but arrived permanently in 1988 after a three year sailing trip from Boston to the Caribbean and Central America. Fran and her husband Bob felt like the Keys had everything they liked about the Caribbean, but was the good old United States, which they missed after three years away. They lived in Marathon for 17 years and Fran worked for the Department of Environmental Protection and the Nature Consevancy. Fran was a long time member of the Florida Keys National Marien Sanctuary and served and chair. Fran and Bob operated a sailing charter business with their sailboat Double Decker our of Key West Bight for 16 years. They now live in Key West in a big yellow house in Old Town with their two cats, Mango and Coco.