Frances Matassa (b. 1994, Seattle) is a Brooklyn-based figurative painter whose work explores trauma, memory, dissociation, and the tension between interior and exterior worlds. Working at a large scale, she situates her figures within landscapes that shift between dream and physical reality, producing images that feel both intimate and uneasy.
Her paintings oscillate between untethered figures whose gazes reflect dissociated and fleeting memories, and more embodied figures who are grounded in moments of clarity within sensory experiences like lying in the long grass hearing the hum of insects. This return home to the self is slippery and marked by the uncanny sense of arriving somewhere familiar that no longer feels entirely known.
Recurring insect motifs move through the work as quiet agents of transformation, decay, and memory. The glowing moth, drawn toward light, reflects a search for something outside the self, while its mirrored luminosity suggests that what is sought may already exist unconsciously.
Matassa holds a BFA from Hunter College and has presented two solo exhibitions with VillageOne Art (NY, 2023, 2025). Her work has been included in group exhibitions with Harsh Collective (NY, 2024) and Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery (NY, 2023), and featured in New Visionary Magazine Issue 15 (2025) and Volta Art Fair (NY, 2023).
Education
2023
B.F.A., Concentration in Painting, Hunter College, New York, NY,
2021
B.A., Studio Art & Art History, Hunter College. New York, NY
Solo Exhibitions
2025
“When The Moon Turns Green,” VillageOneArt, Chelsea, NY
2023
“Embodiment,” VillageOneArt, Chelsea, NY
Group Exhibitions
2024
Art Is Gay, Harsh Collective, New York, NY
2023
Volta Art Fair, Fair Booth, VillageOneArt, Chelsea, NY
Foundations, Online Fair, Artsy
remnants, Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Upper East Side, NY
2022
[em]body, Hunter College Galleries, Tribeca, NY
2021
Garden Salon, Ridgewood, NY
2018
Inhabit, MKO Pop-up Art Space, Portland, OR
Publications
2025
Issue 15, New Visionary Magazine, Victoria J. Fry