With his paintings Franciscus wants to caress the retina first. When he then gets the attention, he hopes that the stratification of his work intellectually challenges, amazes and moves the audience. He tries to contribute to the discourse on topics such as racism, discrimination and the dystopical changes of our climate, by connecting history and the present, using art history as a universal visual language. He is a firm believer that the knowledge of our history will contribute to a better world. The goal is to cultivate understanding for different ways of life, and to realise that we need to take care of each other, and of our vulnerable earth.

European Medieval and Renaissance art is an important source of inspiration for his work. Biblical and mythological stories and iconography often form the basis. Consciously he is standing on the shoulders of old masters, but also gets inspired by celebrities from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries such as Otto Dix, Diego Riviera and John Currin. In the scenes he bridges and combines centuries of art and different cultures. People of today are situated in the tradition of the past, but the reverse also occurs in works that provide the past with contemporary frameworks. He puts a good deal of eclecticism into his artworks and use anachronisms. He combines this with a recognisable stylisation. The figures that he creates allow him to regularly let them return as different characters; as if they were actors. They populate the stories that tell his work. As a 'director' he therefore has the reins in his own hands. This is his way of allowing the viewer to reflect on past and present, and to get acquainted with his worldview and life vision.

Studies for paintings are made by making rough digital montages of images of old masterpieces, homemade photographs and all kinds of images found. He often makes sketches on paper. He manually enlarges these studies on canvas, refines them with painting and adds details. He first draws charcoal on the canvas, then produces detailed grisailles as under-paintings, and finishes the painting with many glazing layers of colour. He often starts with a small work and then makes larger and larger versions. The large versions get more detail as he adjusts the colour, the postures of the figures, and the backgrounds of the chosen format.