Excited to be showing in my hometown! A group of new paintings from my VENTERS, ECHOES, and IMMERSIONS series are now on view in The Haskell Gallery at the Jacksonville International Airport.
The paintings are part of the Spring in Northeast Florida show alongside works by artists Lyn Asselta, Eve Albrecht, and photographer John E. Adams.
Silent Reverie, acrylic on canvas, 60×48
Sweet Madness, acrylic on canvas, 48×48
From the Highest Swing, From the Highest Tree, From the Highest Wing, acrylic on canvas, 24×20 each
While the initial inspiration for these paintings were the theme of Spring in Northeast Florida, it was the springtimes of my childhood there and memories of my mom that informed each piece. During the painting process, I would often look back on old home movies from my childhood, allowing the muted colors and blown out style to inform the palette and overall feel of these pieces.
my brother, my mom, and me, easter 1976 and Weightless and Maybe, acrylic on canvas, 12×12
I plan to share more of the stories and inspiration behind these works with you over the coming weeks, so please stay tuned!
Meanwhile, if you’re in the Jacksonville area, I hope you’ll visit JIA to see these new paintings. The Haskell Gallery is located pre-security, so you don’t need to be traveling to see the show!
You can also see all of the work in the show on my website.
We enter 2018 settled for a bit in Spokane, WA. Doing this travel thing for the last (almost) 7 years has been a strange sort of life for a number of reasons. Since the contracts are usually at least 3 months long, often extending longer, we have the experience of not just visiting but truly living in each place for a time. Of becoming “a local”.
But even on the longer stays, we always know it is just temporary. We aren’t truly local, just visiting.
We often talk about how weird it is to stake a claim in one place– especially if it is a place you were born into, that you didn’t choose yourself. How strange that governments and principalities decide where lines are drawn on a map and we swear allegiance to the lands between those lines. We want to truly choose where we decide to call home.
One thing traveling has taught us has been that you can make a home, make a life, wherever you decide to be. We’re looking forward to finding ourselves in one such locale, wherever it may be, in 2018.
Another year is nearly in the books, ya’ll! This year was one of the most “settled” we’ve had in our nearly seven years of traveling– we were in Tacoma until the end of November and I had my own little dedicated studio space for all that time. It was very good for my creative energy and artistic well being!
As much as the travel and new places fuels my inspiration, the stability of being in one place helped give me the time and space to work out lots of ideas in the studio!
acrylic paintings completed 38
While the number of completed acrylics this year was lower than last, I explored abstraction more than before and felt more emboldened to try out some different ideas. I found my groove in the reflection inspired ECHOES series, completed a second round of the tiny SCINTILLA series, began a new wilderness inspired series LEMOLO, a conglomerate of my CAESURA explorations and my earlier LATITUDE series.
watercolors completed 40
2017 found me diving more into watercolors after my #the100dayproject last year. I explored a range of techniques and forays into abstraction with watercolors this year. In addition to the larger watercolors, I continued my almost daily #watercolorsandcoffee practice.
A goal of mine for 2017 was to increase my experience with commissioned work and I’m proud to have completed 3 commissioned pieces for clients in Florida, Boston, and Vancouver, BC.
28×36 acrylic commission
36×44 watercolor commission
60×36 acrylic commission
Be on the lookout for a new Commissions page on lesleyfrenz.com with more info on past commissions and my process for working with you on a commissioned piece!
September has been a super busy month, ya’ll! My work has been poppin’ up from New Hampshire to Seattle, but this coming weekend, it’s an actual POP-UP!
Friday & Saturday, September 22nd & 23rd, there will be a one-time Pop-Up show of my latest work at the Seattle Art Source showroom in the International District in Seattle. New acrylic paintings from both my ECHOES & LEMOLO series, as well as large & small watercolors on cradled panel will be on display inside the SAC showroom, showcased with Plank & Grain’s gorgeous reclaimed wood furnishings.
I will be in the showroom gallery on Saturday, 9/23 from 11am-1pm and would love to meet you in person! I’ll have my watercolors with me, so you may even catch me doing a little watercolor sketching!
For directions to Seattle Art Source and showroom hours, click here. Hope to see you on Saturday!
Over the last few months, I’ve been working on some new SCINTILLA paintings, just in time to be included in the Enormous Tiny Art Show #21 opening this Friday, March 3rd at Nahcotta Gallery in Portsmouth, NH!
scintilla 14, 2017, acrylic on cradled wood panel, 4x4x1.5
This new group of SCINTILLA mini paintings are a bit of a departure from the last group– still minimal in design and palette, but instead of varying the hues with each painting, I kept to a seaside color scheme, inspired by the Puget Sound and the coastal Northeast.
You can see the new series in person at Nahcotta or check them all out online here! The show runs through April 2nd and all the work is available to purchase both in the gallery and online.
It’s been a bit since I’ve shared what I’m reading with you! I just finished Judy Chicago’s Through The Flower and wanted to share some quick thoughts I took from her early experiences as a female artist.
Frustrated with the patriarchal structure of the art world, in 1970 Chicago took a faculty position with Fresno State College to teach a women-only art program. The groundbreaking Feminist Art Program provided female artists a platform for creating artwork specific to their experiences as women.
For several years, Chicago immersed herself in the study of other female artists working in abstraction. There is truly nothing new under the sun, but looking back at how other women created and functioned in the male dominated world (both the art world and the world at large) helped give the artist the confidence and commitment to create her own visual language and tradition.
In her early years, Chicago heard a professor tell her class that women had made no contributions to art history. This, along with a sense of equality and justice instilled by her father, propelled her to work tirelessly not only to become an important artist but to become an important, inherently feminine artist. Chicago’s style of feminism is very direct, while the work of other female artists can be more subtle.
As an artist, I find myself feeling like I should be making important statements with my work. But as a person, I’ve never been one for overt statements, though I have definite opinions. Over time, Chicago found her voice. I hope to do the same.
Top image by me. Other image sources linked above.
They say practice makes perfect, right? Last year’s #100littleartworks project brought me not only a love of watercolors but also to the appreciation for daily creativity, even on the busiest of days. At the end of last year, I began to cultivate the habit of creating everyday, usually in the morning over my second cup of coffee. And so #watercolorsandcoffee was begun!
It’s that time of year for reflecting on the past twelve months. 2016 had it’s troubles for sure, but it was my most creatively productive year yet– a trend I plan to continue into the next!
acrylic paintings completed 64
I began the year working furiously toward completing work for LATITUDE, my first solo show at Art & Light Gallery. The show was a smashing success, which proved to be a huge blessing and a bit of a stumbling block– I had to get over a bit of the “sophomore slump” after LATITUDE. I dove nearly straight away into a new series, VENTERS, a quiet, coastal inspired series. Looking back over VENTERS, I can see myself searching for where I wanted to go with that group of work and the shift that took place over those months. We spent the summer in Edmonds, WA, just a mile from Puget Sound, which took the initial inspiration of the Oregon & California coast and morphed it into the more quiet peace of the Salish Sea.
While working on VENTERS, I began a series of tiny, monochromatic paintings, SCINTILLA. These baby paintings began as a creative exercise to fill the minutes while waiting for paint to dry. But I’ve grown addicted to making them! I was thrilled when they were accepted by Elliott Fouts Gallery for their Small Gems show, which is still up through January 5th!
We spent the Fall living on a small lake in Western Washington, which added fuel to my newest series, ECHOES. Before we left Edmonds, I’d already had the idea of exploring water reflections in my next body of work and it seemed like fate that we ended up living on a lake! We’ve since moved on to Tacoma, but I’m ending 2016 very focused on pouring out all the inspiration I found at the lake during those months.
watercolor paintings completed 110+
A big surprise for me in 2016 was the result of a 100 day painting project. I participated in the #the100dayproject on Instagram and it led to discovering a love for watercolor painting. I began the project with a few small acrylic paintings, but as we were moving the next week, I decided to move to watercolors for their easy accessibility and clean up. And a love affair was born! A goal for 2017 will be to create larger watercolors on paper and experiment with different substrates. I’m not sure I’ll ever give up acrylics but I do love the softness and gracefulness I’ve found with this new medium.
As an artist, I often find myself taking my work too seriously, so I made strides this year toward making time for creative play. #the100dayproject kicked this off, but after I finished the 100 days, I found myself searching for other avenues, specifically ways to combine painting and natural elements, resulting in #foragescapes and #encirclings.
#foragescapes
#encirclings
I couldn’t write a review of my year as an artist without mentioning time spent in the wild. Mr. F and I spent a lot of time hiking and camping the North Cascades over the summer, as well as walking down to the Puget Sound countless times while we were in Edmonds. We hiked in the Olympics, Mount Rainier, the Columbia River Gorge, and Goat Rocks Wilderness among so many others. Each place we go enters my subconsciousness and I see them emerging from my brush, uncontrollably.
While 2016 ended with a feeling of uncertainty of the future for so many of us, we forge ahead. I’m excited to be back in the studio post-Christmas holiday working on a commission for a Florida designer and finishing four ECHOES paintings on panel, planning for the next and ordering supplies.
I have my goals for the next year and after seeing such growth last year, I’m beyond excited for what 2017 has in store. I wish the same for you!
One goal will be getting back to sharing in this space more often! Hope to see you more frequently in the new year!
If you’re following along with me on Instagram, you may have seen a new series of tiny paintings I’ve been creating, SCINTILLA.
These 4″ square works on deep cradled wood panel began as an exercise to fill the time while larger paintings dried. I always find myself falling in love with the earliest stage of a painting– the stage in which I paint in a monochromatic palette to work out basic light, contrast, and composition. So I thought these little pieces would be the perfect avenue to explore those monochromes as finished work.
Beginning with one color, then adding white and grey for light and contrast, the compositions emerge intuitively. I try not to begin with a set idea in mind, but instead allow a trace of a landscape to emerge slowly.
The first eight of the SCINTILLA paintings are currently hanging at Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento as part of their Small Gems show! Check out the EFG website for pricing and contact information for the gallery.
I’m looking forward to creating more in this series after I get settled into my new studio in Tacoma. Oh yeah, did I not mention we’re headed to Tacoma for the next six months? 🙂
I’ll check in again once we get settled! Meanwhile, check out the SCINTILLA series and all the other Small Gems on the EFG website!
Each season, in each place, has its own palette and I find that each informs my work, wherever I happen to be. We’ve spent our spring and summer on the Puget Sound where I’ve been soaking up the way the water glistens, the seagulls call, the foghorns sound.
While here, in addition to the #100littleartworks project, I’ve been painting my VENTERS coastal series. Initially inspired by the wildness of the Oregon Coast and my memories of the beaches and marshes of North Florida, I wanted these paintings to have the palette and reflective transparency of sea glass and sunsets.
As I look back on the completed series, I see the way the work and the palette shifted the longer we were here on the Sound. I’m looking forward to finding my way through the Fall and the changes it may bring in my palette and my way of seeing.
PS– I’m shipping the last of the VENTERS paintings out to Art & Light Gallery very soon! Then onto the next!
