Francis West was born in 1936 in a remote fishing community on the Moray Firth in Scotland. He spent his formative years there before doing his National Service. Following that, he moved to London where he was admitted to the Chelsea School of Art (1957-1959). He had his first solo show in 1973, at the Hamet Gallery on Cork Street and in 1981 his work was included in the Arts Council’s Hayward Annual. West based himself in Paris during the 90s and made two working trips to America, which marked the beginning of his ‘bandit series’. His paintings are grounded in his experience of real locations and the vast spaces and energies of the North Sea which shaped his earliest visual and mental landscape. Later, visits to the south of France imbued the limpid washes and hedonistic themes of his Mediterranean series. Basic to all of West’s work, whether in drawing, pastel or painting, are figurative forms which have been plunged into states of metamorphosis.  Beings, once originating in myth, literature or life experience, flow into and out of marks on canvas and paper.  They refuse to settle or fix themselves into received representations or familiar dramatic scenarios. His work is included in public collections, including the British Museum, Pallant House Gallery, Arts Council of Great Britain, Victoria and Albert Museum, and numerous private collections.