It’s been almost a month since Sky Becomes Water closed and I probably have enough perspective now to write about it. I was very pleased with this body of work– it felt authentic and vulnerable and like a step forward which I haven’t felt about my work in a long while.
Although I didn’t begin with any hard and fast direction, I did take my jumping off point creatively from two paintings I’d put aside the summer before– they felt like a different direction from the other work I was doing at the time so I stopped working on them and let them breathe for a long time.
It turned out that they were already complete. As I began working on the show, I kept these still as they were and they felt like the touchpoint for where I wanted to take the new paintings.
Ten Thousand Years, Maybe, 2025, acrylic on cradled wood panel, 40x48x2, private collectionMy Being Was a Swan, 2025, acrylic on cradled wood panel, 40x48x2, available at J. Rinehart Gallery
As we hung the show at J. Rinehart Gallery, it was a challenge at first. It seemed like the work wasn’t naturally finding its rhythm on the gallery’s walls. But we persevered and I left that day feeling very happy and proud of producing this group of paintings and my 3rd solo show with JRG.
The show’s opening coincided with Pioneer Square Art Walk and we had a nice number of visitors, a great mix of folks already familiar with my work and some fresh eyes.
The gallery hosted an Artist Talk with me on a Saturday afternoon. Between us, I dread these. I love talking with people one on one about my work but a group setting is pretty uncomfortable for this introvert. So perhaps it’s for the best that these tend to be smaller in attendance, ha! That said, this small but mighty group had some really wonderful questions and insights and I was incredibly grateful for the time we spent together.
A few paintings sold and honestly, in this current economic climate, I am happy with that. Many are still available and I’m hopeful they will find their places and the people who love them.
I’m incredibly grateful to be able to do this work and to Judith, Alexandra, and all the team at J. Rinehart Gallery who support me so well and so fully.
meanwhile the wild geese, acrylic on cradled wood panel, 40×48, available at J. Rinehart Gallery
Sky Becomes Water, my 3rd solo exhibition with J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle opens for a Collector’s Preview this Saturday, August 2nd 2-4pm and an Opening Reception during Pioneer Square ArtWalk next Thursday, August 7th 5-8pm.
Rather than being “inspired” by a particular theme or event, for this body of work, I began with how I wanted these paintings to feel– poetic.
Lyrical, dreamlike, beautiful in an unconventional way– perhaps incongruous or a bit illogical. These aren’t direct representations of landscapes (none of my paintings are) but interpretations of an emotional response to landscape.
my being was a swan, acrylic on cradled wood panel, 40×48, available at J. Rinehart Gallery
Continuing my pursuit of intuitively formed landscapes, I found myself often turning the panels upside down, so that the sky became water and water transformed to sky.
As the fluid pigment runs down the surface, from sky to sea or lake and then back again, I’m reminded of the way water is connecting us all– to the earth, to our source, to every living thing.
tasting of bread and salt, acrylic on cradled wood panel, 40×60, available at J. Rinehart Gallery
You can get a sneak peek at the rest of the work in the show here ! If you see something you’re interested in, you can shoot the gallery an email at judith@jrinehartgallery.com.
In addition to the receptions listed above, there will also be an Artist Talk in the gallery Saturday, August 16th at 1pm.
I’ll be sharing more from the show in the coming days and weeks. I’m excited to show you!
Without even trying, I’ve ended up in a small, burgeoning creative community. One of our talented neighbors makes Mid Century inspired furniture and has long held a dream of opening his own home furnishings boutique. So when he mentioned he would be opening a Pop Up storefront in our little downtown, it took it as a fun chance to help a friend and our local community and maybe just sell a few older paintings.
This special group of paintings we selected from my studio are very inspired by where we live in the Skagit Valley– a mix of abstracted water and vegetative views.
All the paintings available at Small Spaces can be found on their website and are available to purchase there. These paintings are only available from Small Spaces for a limited time– only through September 2025.
Thanks for stopping by for a chat with me! More to come from the studio soon.
It’s that time of year to look back at where I’ve been and ahead to where I’d like to go!
To say 2019 was busy is definitely an understatement! Eleven shows turned out to be an insane pace for even this over-productive artist. AND we bought and furnished a house this year.
I always find this review process such a helpful exercise, so I hope you’ll indulge me (and maybe even enjoy it a little?)
acrylic paintings completed: 80
Somewhere around 75-80 acrylic paintings seems to be my norm, judging by 2018-2019. I think I might like for that number to go down a tiny bit, but as long as I have galleries requesting (and selling!) small works, it looks like that quantity will continue.
Each year I explore a new series, even if briefly, and this year it was ENTANGLEMENTS. This series felt right and even exciting at the time, but my interest waned, as it seems to do sometimes. It may be something I revisit eventually, but for now, I don’t have a desire to go any further.
I continued to revisit VENTERS seascapes, my tiny SCINTILLA series, and my series of water abstractions, ECHOES. In the ECHOES series especially, I explored ways of expressing more texture and movement within the context of water. I loved experimenting, but find myself longing to go back to the more calm, peaceful expression of water reflections.
Sometimes we have to diverge from the path only to find our way back to where we are headed..
My LEMOLO series continued to evolve and I was very pleased with where these took me this year. Things brightened and softened for my two person show at Art & Light and then, after signing on with a new Seattle gallery, I allowed myself to explore more mountainous terrain in these memory journeys. I’m looking forward to seeing this series and my landscape work continue to evolve in 2020.
watercolors completed: 28 plus lots of sketches and a super secret commission
I’ve been painting these abstracted tree watercolors for 2 years now and took on a couple of new challenges this year– the first being a big commission/licensing deal with a major outdoor brand (stay tuned for that announcement in 2020!) that took a lot of time in phone calls, emails, and negotiations and then an incredibly fast turn around. This wasn’t my first foray into licensing but it was the first time I’ve created paintings specifically to be used as a textile pattern design and definitely the quickest turn around EVER for a commission.
The second watercolor challenge was to create these little watercolors on a larger scale for the New Additions show at J Rinehart Gallery in Seattle.
In my biggest personal news of the year, WE BOUGHT A HOUSE. After 8 years of traveling, we were both ready to settle down and in 2018 we decided Western Washington was our spot, especially after hubby was offered a job in Everett. We started casually looking at houses around March and found a little house that felt warm and welcoming, that seemed perfect to grow old in (ugh, we have to plan for that now), and in an area we love and neighborhood where affordable houses go FAST. So we pulled the trigger much sooner than we’d planned and hubby actually closed and started moving in while I was on the East Coast for the Breath | Air show and my niece’s graduation. Insanity!
So any creative juices and energy not expended in creating over 100 paintings has gone into planning, painting, furnishing, organizing, cleaning and all the work that goes into a new home. It is coming along, I’m hoping by this time next year I will no longer be laying awake at night designing rooms in my head.
Compared to years past, we didn’t get much hiking or adventuring in this year (see paragraph above about new house, ha!). But we did finally get to see Mount Hood, Lopez Island, and British Columbia!
With such a busy year, I didn’t quite get to all of my goals that I laid out at the end of last year, and priorities shifted so that some of these weren’t even on my radar..
Expand my gallery representation in the West/Northwest and beyond.. CHECK but this is still a goal for 2020, specifically representation in the West (Colorado, Santa Fe, Jackson Hole, etc).
Expand representation for corporate and healthcare artwork placement in the Pacific Northwest.. applied to a few opportunities but other priorities came first.This is an ongoing quest.
Build a new website (ugh! this needs to be done but I am SO not looking forward to it).. This is at the top of my list for 2020. Stay tuned!
Merge this blog into the new website.. Artsy Forager has been around for almost 9 years but having this blog separate from my artist website just doesn’t make sense anymore. I will probably continue to have both domains functioning for a while, but clicks to AF will redirect to lesleyfrenz.com. I will still blog it just won’t be under the Artsy Forager domain. This goal has been a long time coming, so fingers crossed I can get it done this year!
Explore more IMMERSIONS work in acrylic.. nope. This didn’t happen. I still think about it occasionally but don’t feel a strong pull. So this is dropping off my Goals list.
New goals for 2020:
Streamline my accounting, inventory systems
Streamline, do better organizing and planning for social media
Create and foster community with other artists in the Northern Puget sound area
Attend at least one workshop to either learn a new skill or improve existing skills, explore new ideas
Apply to at least half a dozen artist residencies
2020 is already shaping up to be commission heavy (looking at somewhere around 10 commissioned paintings already in the planning stages) and I’m looking forward to seeing where the new year takes me!
Thank you, dear friends, for continuing to follow along on this journey, especially between the radio silences here on the blog. I won’t promise more blog posts next year, but I do to come and check in more often.
Hiya! I have a couple more shows opening this month to tell you about, just in case you missed them on my social media feeds.
SHELTER, a mixed media, group art exhibition featuring new works from Janet Eskridge, Kim Ferreira, Lesley Frenz and Duy Huynh. We explore various themes of ‘shelter’, from man-made and naturally occurring structures that nurture and protect, to symbolic spaces that offer emotional respite and refuge.
my work in SHELTER
SHELTER is up at Lark & Key in Charlotte and shoppable online on their website. The show is now through November 27th, their regular retail hours are 10am-3pm Wed- Fri and by appointment. They are open the 2nd Saturday and Sunday of each month, as well!
Something New, is a group show featuring new work by Robert Adams, Najin Bae, John Karl Claes, Jaime Longa, Manuel Nunes, Abigale Palmer, Justin Wheatley, and moi.
like a siren, acrylic on canvas, 36x36x1.5
Something New will be up at Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento until November 7th and also shoppable online (isn’t the 21st century great?! You can buy art in your pjs!)
Also, a bunch of new work is coming to J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle next month! I am super pleased to be joining the roster of artists in this new Pioneer Square gallery and happy to add a retail gallery to my Seattle representation!
Stay tuned for more on that new round of work– it’s an exciting bunch!
It’s been 3 years since my last show at Art & Light Gallery and I’m so excited to be heading back to Greenville on May 3rd for the opening of Breath | Air, a two person show with Asheville artist, Alicia Armstrong.
Alicia paints beautiful figurative work in which she intertwines the female figure with intricate, vintage wallpaper-like patterns. We both approach our subjects from a desire to create from a place of memory– our paintings are not literal but layered in atmosphere and color.
such tender dreams, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 24×20
From “Oxygen” by Mary Oliver “You are breathing patiently;
it is a
beautiful sound. It is
your life..
Then it settles
to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.”
We are in a constant state of exchange with our environment– we are one, as the air that fills our lungs and gives us life is the same air that sustains all of the life that surrounds us. We breathe the air that becomes the breath, that breath becomes air– a continuous, interdependent cycle of life.
If you’re in the Greenville area, I hope you’ll come by the Breath | Air opening on Friday, May 3rd to see the show and say hello! The show will be up at Art & Light through the end of May.
Pantone announced its Color of the Year for 2019 as Living Coral. I’ll admit, at first I was a bit disappointed, as I felt like the representation of the color I was seeing wasn’t really one I could relate to. It felt over saturated and a bit brash, which, if I’m being completely frank, most of the Pantone COTY seem to me (sorry, Pantone!).
But then, I began to look around– at my Pinterest inspiration boards and in my own paintings. And I realized that shades of Living Coral were everywhere!
How do you feel about Living Coral? It’s always interesting to see how much influence Pantone’s COTY has on the art world, whether directly or subconsciously. I won’t be purposefully adding it to my work, but you never know how things sneak in!
Every year at this time I like to take a few moments to reflect back on what has transpired in the past twelve months. This year was crazy busy personally and professionally and I’m ending the year with several goals met, some hard lessons learned, and a long To Do list already in place for 2019. Care to take a walk down memory lane with me?
acrylic paintings completed 75
Wow! I was definitely a busy girl this year. I continued my ECHOES and LEMOLO series in 2018 and began revisiting my VENTERS seascape series, thanks to a show in January inspired by Florida and the inspiration found at our new home on Camano Island in Washington. This year also saw the beginning of a new series, IMMERSIONS, which I’m still excited about though I pursued the idea more in new watercolors on panel, I hope to explore more in this series in acrylics in the new year.
watercolor paintings completed 42 plus loads of sketches
My love affair with watercolor continued this year, especially after discovering the joy of painting large scale watercolors on canvas! My IMMERSIONS watercolor forest abstractions were especially popular and I have a feeling there will be more to come in 2019.
Again this year, I upped my commissions completed, increasing from 3 last year to 5 this year (goal met, check!). I’m still learning what works best for me when doing commissions and I won’t lie, they can be a struggle. My painting process has evolved to where I work very intuitively, allowing the composition to emerge over time and with commissions often based on previous paintings, it can be difficult to retain the same sense of spontaneity and layering that is inherent in my work.
commissions completed 5
A goal for any commissions in 2019 is to paint without expectation of the outcome– to try to let the commissions evolve more naturally. A lofty goal, for sure, for a people pleaser like me.
This year I said yes to as many opportunities as I could, and learned some really valuable lessons along the way.
I’m sure this is different for every artist, especially depending on how one measures success, but the past year taught me that, for me, investing time and inventory in “shows” in which the venue or organizer does not have a substantial financial stake in either the sale of the work or the success of the exhibition leads to a whole lot of work and financial investment on the part of the artist with little but a pat on the back and a line on your resume in return. I usually think of these types of shows as “resume builders” but I’ve reached a point where my work is selling so well through my galleries that tying up work in shows just doesn’t make sense for that line on my resume.
exhibition/show participation 6
My work is selling well through my wonderful, hard working, committed galleries and representatives. And while I’m excited to participate in gallery shows, in 2019 I will only pursue non-gallery exhibitions that make sense for me financially and professionally and will be very careful about to whom I entrust my work.
Which leads me to the biggest womp womp of my year..
paintings lost or damaged 15 (cue sad music and crying)
The paintings pictured above were all damaged to the extent they required hours of work to recover/repaint completely or lost in shipment this year. There were 5 more that had smaller damage while in someone else’s care and there are three more that may or may not be sellable due to shoddy craftsmanship by a vendor I’ve used extensively in the past.
I think 2018 will go down as the year I learned some very hard lessons about how to know my worth as an artist and the worth of my work and that I must under any and all circumstances treat it as the important and valuable commodity it is and expect others to do the same. And if they do not– I will not work with them again. Period.
But on to happier topics! One of my goals for 2018 was to increase my streams of “passive income” by having some of my work published as prints and I’m thrilled to note that my small selections of my work are available as prints through Wonderwall Studio and as custom wall coverings through Area Environments.
2019 will bring more print publishing opportunities, as I’ve just signed a contract with Grand Image and (hopefully) will launch my own print shop on Minted. I’m not looking to become a print artist (original work will always be my focus), but it is my hope that by offering some of my work as prints, it will broaden my reach as an artist.
In other news this year, the Mr. and I did lots of hiking, explored territories both familiar and new, including over a month spent exploring the Southwest.
But perhaps the most exciting event of 2019– officially moving our residency to Washington! We’d decided in 2017 that we wanted to settle for awhile (maybe forever!) in Western Washington this year. So when the Mr. landed a travel contract in Everett and we found a lovely little apartment on the water on Camano Island, we were thrilled. Little did we know that we would fall hard for this little island and George would land a full time permanent job in Everett.
one of many beautiful sunrises from our bulkhead
So we’re here to stay in this place and I’m looking forward to the new year and getting back to business!
I’ve already mentioned a few things to look forward to in 2019, but mark your calendars for May 3, 2019, when I will be opening a new show at Art & Light Gallery in Greenville alongside the wonderfully talented Alicia Armstrong!
Goals for 2019:
Expand my gallery representation in the West/Northwest and beyond
Expand representation for corporate and healthcare artwork placement in the Pacific Northwest
Build a new website (ugh! this needs to be done but I am SO not looking forward to it)
Merge this blog into the new website
Explore more IMMMERSIONS work in acrylic
And of course, I will be creating new work in all my current series– so many ideas to get out of my head!
Thank you all for continuing to follow along and join me in the journey. See you in 2019!
I always think of this time of year as the season of sparkle– everything from the twinkle lights to the frosty morning dew feels glittering and special. I’m honored to be a part of the Small Gemsshow at Elliott Fouts Gallery, a showcase of small works perfect for gift giving!
new ECHOES 12×12 paintings now at Elliott Fouts Gallery
Living on the water in the Pacific Northwest, each day is spent gazing out and seeing how the water’s surface shifts and changes with the evolving light throughout the day, from the pink light of early morning to the glittering of evening lights across the water.
gold spirit, acrylic on canvas, 12×12
midnight moon, acrylic on canvas, 12×12
If you’re near the Sacramento area, you can see these and the other works in the Small Gems show at Elliott Fouts Gallery now through the end of December. Or just click over to their website to see them all online!
October and November were a couple of crazy busy months for me in the studio, as I fielded requests from galleries for lots of new, smaller works in time for the holiday gift giving season. They’ve been so good to me, I couldn’t dare let anyone down!
The autumnal season has always been a favorite time of year for me, so I let the palette and feeling of Fall in the Pacific Northwest inspire and guide new LEMOLO and ECHOES acrylics and watercolor paintings.
What began with more vibrant tones of early Fall, grew into more desaturated hues as the colors began to fade. Those late Fall colors have always spoken deeply to me, with their velvety, jeweled colors, less bright and brassy, more elegant and quiet.
painting- Land I Grew In, acrylic on canvas, 12×6, available at Lark & Key
painting- Ramble I, watercolor and cold wax on cradled wood panel, 14×11, available at Art & Light
painting- My Heart in Tow (detail), acrylic on canvas, 12×12, available at Elliott Fouts Gallery
Despite being two different mediums and different series, these new works all feel like a cohesive collection and a time capsule of this wonderfully sparkly time of year!
If you’re in Greenville, Charlotte or Sacramento, I hope you’ll check out each gallery’s offerings in person or peruse my website for all the new beauties!
