‘IT’S ANOTHER FORM OF EXPRESSION’
After losing his singing voice in 2017, David Francey turned to painting
Although David Francey is a selftaught musician who played no instruments, his abilities as a singersongwriter have earned him three Juno Awards.
But having recently lost his singing voice, Francey — “instead of falling in a pit of depression,” the 63-year-old says — has renounced performing and turned to painting, at which he is also self-taught.
For that matter, Francey, who was born in Scotland and who lives in the tiny hamlet of Elphin, west of Perth, is also colour blind. But that condition hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm.
“I’m hoping we can get the art out there and that people will continue to appreciate it,” Francey says. “It’s another form of expression, you want it to be accepted.”
Instead of embarking on a tour in support of his most recent album, The Broken Heart of Everything, Francey this spring hit the road with an art tour, exhibiting his acrylic paintings at 13 galleries and other venues from Victoria to Montague, P.E.I.
His next exhibit is Wednesday night at the Bridgehead Roastery and Coffeehouse on Anderson Street near Preston Street, where Francey will talk about his paintings and music, but won’t perform.
“It’s been a bit unfortunate, to say the least,” Francey says of losing his voice. In June 2017, after 15 years of touring, he cancelled all of his upcoming gigs.
“It finally caught up with me. A
couple years back, it (my voice) was starting to get strained. I should probably have gotten off the road sooner than I did.”
He hopes that resting his voice will allow him to return one day to music. (“I’m still writing,” he says.) Until then, Francey, who worked in construction into his late 40s before giving music a serious go, will focus on painting.
Francey picked up his brushes more than two decades ago, inspired by his wife, Beth Girdler, whom he calls a “brilliant watercolourist.” Francey tried his hand at watercolours, too, but “it didn’t work,” he says. “I picked up acrylics and never stopped.”
He says he tends to paint a lot of landscapes and rural settings.
“A lot of the stuff is what you see out of the windshield of your truck or car, the countryside, places I’ve been.” Francey says that because of his colour blindness, he has a “very limited palette.”
But he takes great pleasure just the same in painting, which he seems to liken to meditation.
“I like the part where you’re just staring at it,” he says. “The greatest feeling is figuring out what you need to do ... you can lose hours and hours and hours.”