Francis Schuck

I was a teenager writing on train cars in the LIRR yards and Long Island City before I knew what a gallery was. That's where I learned gesture, presence, and urgency, and it's still the language I'm building.

Marks on surfaces are where it starts for me, like letters before they form words into a story. I work between abstraction and narrative figuration, pulled toward materials that already carry a history: discarded drawings, linens, thread, pigment, sometimes stained or torn.

These days that same urgency shows up as scratching, stitches, and the soft weight of paper and old bed linens instead of spray paint. It still lives in the same place, cultural memory and critique, how we market innocence, brand identity, and mistake nostalgia for truth.