Biography

Frances Swigart Steg creates original work, both prints and paintings. She personally prints and signs each limited edition. These are traditional intaglio and relief prints, not reproductions. Most are on handmade paper, often water colored. Her paintings are oil on gold, silver, and copper leaf on wood. Atelier Frances Swigart has been a source for the designer, architect, and collector for 40 years. From childhood she knew that art was her passion. Her undergraduate mentor was Sadie Irvine, who taught Frances at the Sacred Heart Convent in New Orleans. Frances received her BFA from Newcomb Art School of Tulane University. Her painting teacher was Ida Kohlmyer. She learned etching from James Steg, whom she married many years later. After graduating, she worked in the graphic art department of her father’s Advertising agency. Later while teaching at the Hunter Museum of Art and the University of Tennessee, she started publishing her etchings with TransArt in Atlanta. On returning to New Orleans, she began printing from her own Atelier. On her father’s first visit to the studio, he was surprised to find a press like the press his father had used. Frances’s grandfather had died before she was born, yet both chosen the same medium for their art. (From the artist’s website)