Born in Armagh in 1970, Frances McKenna graduated in 1994 from the University of Ulster with a Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree in Fine Art Painting. Frances has received several awards for her work, including in 1996 and 1998 the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Bursary Award and in 1996 the T. Murphy & Co Award from the well-respected Belfast Young Contemporaries. More recently she won First Prize in the Bass Contemporary Art Awards held in October 2000.

In December 1995, one of her paintings was selected to represent County Armagh in the Designs on Peace exhibition, held at the United States Embassy in Dublin in honour of the first official visit to Ireland by President Clinton. Here, Frances had the opportunity to meet the President and the First Lady.

Frances has participated in many group exhibitions throughout Ireland, exhibiting regularly over the last several years in the Cavehill Gallery Belfast Christmas Exhibition and the Bass Contemporary Art Awards. Work exhibited at the Cavehill Gallery in November 1998 was the subject of critical acclaim in the press, with favourable reviews from local critics typified by the comments of the Belfast Telegraph and the Newsletter:

Belfast Telegraph, Saturday 7th November 1998: "...Frances McKenna's pictures are all about cheerful occasions - weddings, nights in the pub and Irish musical evenings. Her colours are vibrant reds, oranges and yellows and her scenes are full of happy people, enjoying life - dancing through autumn leaves, drinking, singing or playing music. Her style is very individual with lots of texture both physically in the paint and in the flat patterns of the surroundings. Realism is not her aim yet she succeeds in getting across the emotional feel in her unselfconscious, almost naive approach…"

Newsletter, Wednesday 18th November 1998: "...Armagh born Frances McKenna, the only full-timer in the group, goes for the faux naïf in her brightly toned reds, oranges, and yellows of pub musical sessions where perspective is abandoned, where the same faces occur and reoccur and musical notes float like feathers…"

May 2000 saw her first solo exhibition, held at the Clotworthy Arts Centre in Antrim. This was followed in September of the same year by an exhibition in her home city of Armagh, held at The Market Place Theatre and Arts Centre. More recently, in November 2002, Frances gave a solo exhibition of her work at the Armagh City Hotel, which met with favourable criticism from local artists and collectors alike.

Frances has taken her place amongst the established Irish Artists. Her work is included in the private collections of several serious collectors of Irish Art, and can be increasingly found in the collections of government and corporate bodies including the collections of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, the Irish News, Ulster Television, Bass Ireland and Armagh District Council.

Speaking of herself, Frances says: “People and places are the themes that continue to be the source of my inspiration. My oil paintings show events, either witnessed or created by my imagination. They are all events I can identify with, within my own environment. Each person has his or her own personality and each place has its own sense of atmosphere. I hope to convey this through my use of colour and brush strokes.”