Frances Beth Davids, known as Franne to those close to her, was born in Connecticut on December 17, 1950. The eldest of two children in the prototypical American Jewish family, she was the teenage girl with the bouffant sixties’ haircut and wearing a swing dress. By then Franne had discovered the gift of art within her, and she intended to allow it to flourish. Little did she know that the seed of mental illness would eventually consume her entire life, eradicating any prospect of an art career in the public eye, but blossoming into an extensive oeuvre that developed in isolation.
After graduating from high school in 1968, Franne endeavored to get a college education, attending several institutions for brief periods that were punctuated by psychotic breaks. By the late 1970s she was formally diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and had to move back to her parents’ house in Waterbury, Connecticut, where she lived for the rest of her life, and where she died in 2022.
Thrust into the self-fulfilling prophesy of the “outsider” artist, Franne fell headfirst into the black hole of her mental illness. Her reality was fractured and a lush fantasy world, rendered in paint, was born. The basement of the house became her studio and haven, and she was left alone to wander the mysterious trails of her nonconforming brain.
