[2] In one of her earliest public displays in Los Angeles, which was a joint exhibit in 1909 with other high school teachers, Frances contributed a collection of "striking water color scenes".

At her first one-person exhibition in March 1911 at the Walker Theatre Gallery the Los Angeles Times art critic Antony Anderson described her 35 watercolor landscapes as being "full of movement".

[3][5] Gearhart was taught block printing by her sisters May and Edna, also artists, who had learned it from Arthur Wesley Dow at the Ipswich Summer School of Art in Massachusetts.

[2][6] Influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, Gearhart made prints that featured strong use of inky black or dark blue lines together with rich foreground colors set off against muted deep backgrounds.

[6] She frequently included paths, roads, and waterways to lead the viewer into the image and made use of sentinel trees to anchor her compositions.

She and her sisters May and Enda set up an art gallery in Pasadena, CA, where they curated exhibitions for the PMSC and for leading European printmakers.

[3] Frances and May held a joint exhibition of color etchings and woodblock prints in October 1922 at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles.