Profile image of Julia courtesy Don Tonge Julia Uttley is a Bolton‑based photographer whose work reveals a deep connection to the region’s industrial heritage and moorland landscapes. Born and raised in Lancashire’s Fylde region, she was drawn back north in 2015,...
Franki Beddows | Bolton Artist
Franki Beddows | Bolton Artist
Franki Beddows
Artist
I paint to get lost. It’s the moment of flow—where shapes, shadows and textures start to whisper—that keeps pulling me back to the canvas. In those early layers of acrylic, faces, figures, and strange little creatures begin to reveal themselves. I never go looking for them; I just listen. My inner voice takes the lead, and I follow.
I use whatever’s needed—tools, brushes, even my fingers—to build the story. Every painting is a kind of emotional archaeology, where something hidden gets brought to the surface. Sometimes it’s a feeling, other times a full-blown narrative I never expected.
The subjects can feel eerie or unsettling, and I’m good with that. I’ve always had a love for the macabre. As a kid, I’d sneak downstairs to catch horror films with my dad or borrow all the ghost books from the school library. That fascination with the darker edges of life has never left me.
It’s all part of the human experience—the dark and the light. We carry both. My work is just one way of letting it all speak.
Memories Of Southport Sunset
Memories of a Southport Sunset holds a different kind of darkness – quieter, more contemplative. There’s no menace here, but a weight all the same.
The fiery sky, almost surreal in its intensity, glows behind the silhouetted treeline like something long remembered—vivid but softened by time.
That green foreground, layered and tactile, carries a sense of stillness and waiting, like a place you once knew but now only revisit in dreams.
This is still unmistakably Franki – expressive, unpolished, emotionally honest but with an invitation rather than a challenge.
It’s a gothic nostalgia: something beautiful with a slight ache in its bones. The kind of painting that stays with you not because it shouts, but because it hums with memory.
Artwork Title: Memories Of A Southport Sunset
Artist: Franki Beddows
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 25cm x 30cm
Price: £75
Presentation: Unframed, ready to hang
Being Consumed
A visceral dive into the subconscious, Being Consumed captures that raw, chaotic edge where inner turmoil and haunting memory collide. The central figures distorted, ghostlike, and almost puppet-like in expression seem to be caught mid-sentence, mid-scream, mid-thought.
There is a sense of stillness and violence coexisting. Behind them, barely concealed in shadow, lurk creatures with glowing eyes—watching, waiting, whispering.
Franki leans unapologetically into the strange and the unsettling, bringing forward stories that many would rather keep buried.
This piece, like much of her work, doesn’t offer comfort – it invites confrontation. It’s a mirror to the things we often ignore: the ache, the scream, the faceless watchers we carry around inside.
Artwork Title: Being Consumed
Artist: Franki Beddows
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 40cm x 30cm
Price: £95
Presentation: Unframed, ready to hang
Take a look at the others exhibiting this summer
Julia Uttley | Bolton Photographer
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