Atelier Frey
Shown at the Theta Belcher Gallery in January 2020, these images were hung unstretched and unsupported on the walls. The casual canvas substrate and provisional style of this work both contrast its heavier content.
oil paint, oil pastel, and charcoal on canvas, 2019
36 x 48 inches
My 18-year old son became a US Marine. Right out of boot camp, he recounted the gruesome history of many battles. The song "99 Red Balloons” played in my head as I saw an incredible independent spirit do as he was told. He understands what seemingly few in this country do. Marines are not racist. If they enter boot with any ounce of judgment or animosity, they are changed to trust and respect all humanity. He believes that if all young US citizens would serve in any military branch for two years only, the racial problems our country is having at this moment would be gone in a generation.
oil paint, oil pastel and charcoal on canvas, 2019
36 x 48 inches
Memories of travel via platforms we carry with us, as if we hold the hand of the ultimate creator, he who holds the future and the past.
oil and charcoal on canvas, 2019
28 x 40 inches
My son is a modern-day “riflemen” and yet his heart pumps the blood of the past. He is a direct descendant of the Schutters or "guards of the city" that you see in Rembrandt's paintings. My mother-in-law was a docent at the Rijksmuseum and taught us about her Amsterdam.
Dutch artists were the first to show me how beautiful the ordinary can be. Another work in progress: "Uniforming,” the forming of “a force,” carrots dangled for medals. If only our society could truly embrace race and identity with the same uniform fairness.
oil on canvas, 2019
28 x 36 inches
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Colliding images of the destruction of the past and sheer joy I experienced in Berlin the week it tumbled down with many of us chipping away at the beautiful graffiti. You could cut the tension and uncertainty in the air with a knife. I feel a similar unknowing now with the invisible walls that divide in my own country.
oil and charcoal on canvas, 2019
28 x 40 inches
oil on linen, 2019
65 x 65 inches
Memories and dreams of my child, his energy, and his undersea antics. (Detail below.)
oil on canvas, 2019
32 x 40 inches
My daughter lost everything in November of 2019 to an apartment building fire. Time stopped. She lost her dog and best friend, and the material life she had built on her own. The delicate threads that hold our lives together and the pain was similar to what I have felt of Frieda's paintings.
oil on linen, 2019
96 x 58 inches
Here I began to paint more from life now instead of photos and memories. It is easier to paint something that exists more solid and opaque.
I started to question my impulses. Does impulse, or unconscious drive stand in the way of the meaningful?
oil on canvas, 2020
14 x 19 inches
In a visit to the Melancholy Museum at the Cantor, Mark Dion’s juxtapositions of objects that ignite such unexpected connections fascinated me! I was so taken with young Leland Stanfords’ taxidermy of his stud horse's ears, and not the rest of the horse. Ears are a symbol of intelligence so there was no need to stuff the entire horse when he had the most valuable part.
Arrangements of objects reflect your world view just as the arrangement of objects in a painting.
oil and charcoal on canvas, 2019
28 x 36 inches
This personal piece opened the door to a new "Hummingbird Effect” series in the works.
2019
Gallery 8 group show