Principle Gallery

In 1984, President Reagan declared July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday in July as National Ice Cream Day. This year, we’re celebrating National Ice Cream Day by sharing some delicious works by Francis Livingston newly arrived at the gallery.

Having worked frequently in illustration toward the beginning of his career, Francis Livingston took on many interesting projects. During this time, a San Francisco design company approached him with an idea to use his artwork on the packaging for Dreyer’s ice cream. The experience of painting a wide variety of flavors of ice cream for this project introduced Francis to the great fun of the subject matter, and years later he began to incorporate ice cream into his gallery work. He’s even had a whole exhibition of his ice cream paintings!

Francis’s work has been featured on packaging of several types, including that of wine, teas, and even a flavor of Grey Goose vodka! While the artwork he creates for galleries is primarily focused on cityscapes, Francis continues to paint ice cream as well. Though he originally worked from photographs when painting for the Dreyer’s packaging, and always works from a photograph in his cityscapes, Francis has now found that ice cream is a subject that he prefers to paint from imagination. The process of choosing colors, cones, numbers of scoops, and toppings is a whimsical creative outlet, and Francis admits that ice cream is the most fun for him of anything he paints. As if ice cream weren’t already a tempting enough treat, Francis’s lush paint strokes, refreshing colors, and creamy texture make the ice cream in these paintings all the more delectable –it’s difficult to look at these works and resist celebrating this holiday by enjoying some ice cream ourselves!

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