Tiburon painter Fran Hall served on Heritage and Arts board for more than a decade
Tiburon resident Fran Hall, a longtime Heritage and Arts commissioner and painter who exhibited her works at Town Hall and the Belvedere-Tiburon Library, died in her sleep Nov. 4. She was 89. Her cause of death was not available at The Ark’s press time.
Hall served on the commission from 2012 until April 2024. She was also a longtime member of the Marin Society of Artists, the Society of Western Artists, Tiburon’s Garden Center Art Guild and the Golden Gate chapter of the National League of American Pen Women, an organization of writers, artists and poets.
Tiburon Heritage and Arts Commissioner Victoria Fong said Hall was committed to her artwork, happy to participate in shows and was a diligent commissioner.
“She was always hard working and willing to help,” Fong said.
Hall introduced Vice Chair Jaleh Etemad to the commission when Etemad was named the town’s artist laureate in 2012. The two women were also neighbors, and Etemad said she loved spending time with Hall during Fourth of July and Christmas parties. Etemad called Hall’s death “very sad news.”
“She was a really generous person, lovely lady, a good artist and remained in Heritage and Arts for so many years,” Etemad said.
In addition to her local arts contributions, Hall and her husband, Walter, cofounded the Marin chapter of the American International Youth Student Exchange Program in 1981. The chapter was a subsidy of the U.S. Information Agency’s international youth exchange program. For two decades, until about 2002, Hall was the chapter’s executive director and supervised more than 4,000 international students’ exchanges to the U.S. and 1,500 American students’ exchanges abroad. The Halls housed two international students annually during that time; many past students visited Hall, or she visited them in their respective countries, according to a 2014 article in The Ark.
She also was president of Napa-based nonprofit Vine Village, which worked to provide skills training to people with disabilities and assistance to their families. The nonprofit closed in 2020.
Hall was born Francella Theresa Kohls on June 2, 1935, in Yakima, Washington, to Francis and Palpileda Kohls. She had one younger brother, Stephen.
Growing up, Hall gravitated toward playing piano and singing, saying in a 2011 Ark article that she didn’t want to compete with her mother, who was an artist. Hall was a soprano with the Winifred Baker Chorale at Dominican University and sang at Davies Symphony Hall, home of the San Francisco Symphony, for Strawberry-based SingersMarin’s 25th anniversary concert in 2013.
She graduated from Seattle University with degrees in political science and education and spent the early part of her career as an elementary-school teacher in Washington. She met Walter during a sailboat race in Seattle about 1958, catching his attention when she capsized her boat.
At first, she was only allowed to go out with him if they were accompanied by another couple during their dates, leading to double dates with Hall’s friend and her boyfriend, Hall said in 2011.
“My friend’s full-grown St. Bernard dog came and sat between Walter and me in the back seat of the convertible,” she said of an early date.
They wed in 1961 and were married until Walter’s death in 2014.
The Halls relocated from Seattle to Tiburon in 1972 after Walter became the chair of periodontics at the University of the Pacific’s dental school in San Francisco. The Halls raised their two sons, Walter Scott Hall and Gregory Kohls Hall, in Tiburon. Neither son could be reached for an interview ahead of The Ark’s press deadline.
Hall gave painting a try in the 1960s, taking an abstract painting class. But when Hall brought her first completed painting home, Walter didn’t want to hang it, and Hall soon pivoted to traditional landscapes.
“I found that painting made me feel very complete,” she said in 2011. “It gave me a relaxed, happy feeling.”
Her work supervising student exchanges kept Hall away from painting until she left the program around 2002, when she took up painting again.
An oil painter and watercolorist, she also studied painting under Washington-state painter Joan Bennett and Larkspur artist Elizabeth Turner Boyd.
Hall liked to paint places she spent time in, including Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Hawaii, Carmel-by-the-Sea, as well as seascapes, still-life portraits and florals from her home garden.
“I get great satisfaction from painting this area where we live,” she said in 2014. “We’re right in the middle of beauty … the flowers, the mountains, the ocean.”
In addition to Town Hall and the library, Hall’s works were displayed at the Marin Civic Center’s Bartolini Gallery and were hung in homes across the world, from San Francisco and Seattle to Madrid and Marseilles, France. Operatic soprano Beverly Sills had one of Hall’s paintings, “Daisies,” in her home, according to Hall’s profile for Marin Open Studios, where she also exhibited.
In addition to her sons, who both live in Fairfax, Hall is survived by her brother, Stephen, and wife, Sheila Kohls, of Yakima, Washington; sister-in-law Grace Hall Denizkurt of Naples, Florida; and several nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her husband and her parents.
A memorial service was held Jan. 30 at St. Hilary Catholic Church.
Donations in Hall’s name can be made to the Lifehouse Agency, a San Rafael-based nonprofit that supports individuals with developmental disabilities in Marin, Sonoma and San Francisco counties, via lifehouseagency.org/donate; or to the music program of St. Hilary’s Catholic Church and School in in Tiburon, via sthilary.org/give.
Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.
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