FRANCES DUARTE
 

Frances Schandera-Duarte was born in Germany and trained as a fashion designer in Schneeberg. Growing up in East Germany, her early years were shaped by curiosity and a longing to explore beyond its borders.

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After her studies, she worked for a creative fashion label in Zurich before spending two formative years in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, where vast landscapes left a lasting impression on her artistic sensibility. A later art project brought her to South Africa, where she met her husband, artist Everett Duarte. Today, she lives and works between Germany and South Africa.

Her background in fashion continues to inform her work through a refined sensitivity to colour, form and proportion. Inspired by nature, her paintings emerge intuitively, often taking on a dreamlike quality as they evolve.

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Working with mixed media — including Japanese paper, gauze and textured surfaces — she builds layered compositions that balance structure and spontaneity. The result is a tactile and expressive body of work shaped by memory, place and material.