STATEMENT

Employing the techniques of the past in the service of contemporary exploration, I seek to add a fresh voice to the sometimes venerable, sometimes dusty and archaic tradition of large-scale figurative painting, while subtly addressing the mythology, objectification and subjugation of women. My subjects are at first glance close to home-new mothers, friends, lovers, artists, dancers-but are then placed at a distance via edgy but subtle modification, rigorous technique, minimal contexts and composition, and idiosyncratic use of color. I am also interested in social presentation, artifice, and simulation as they relate to my subjects. I hope to peel away a gossamer thin layer of reality, not just to document the real but also to reveal what might be.

BIOGRAPHY

Given my restless history, it is curious that I became a figurative painter in New York City. My maternal Grandparents fled Hitler's Germany in the late 1930's. After being refused entry to the United States, they were welcomed into the Dominican Republic, where they happily resided in a small orderly bungalow of their own design and made their living as studio photographer and cheese maker for seven years. Amid this exotic island milieu, my mother was born. Similarly, my fraternal grandparents, he being a US medic stationed in New Zealand and she, a seventeen year old Kiwi, met just long enough in the back of an ambulance in the early 1940's for her to come to the US on a steamer eighteen months later with their nine-month-old baby boy: my father.

My eventual parents found each other in Nevada City, California, a small Gold Rush town flanked by a river and nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There they fashioned a life according to their own rules and beliefs, free from the rigid standards of mainstream society. I was born on the floor of an old miner's cabin on a frigid November night in 1977. The midwife, who had learned the art of delivering babies while assisting her grandfather across the moors of Scotland, lived atop an icy ridge, did not own a telephone, and was summoned just in time. She made her living as a welder and considered her midwifery skill a gift. She refused to take money for her services. As payment, my mother, a ceramic sculptor, crafted her a large salad bowl with which to catch future placentas. So for the price of a handcrafted, multi-use salad bowl, (my first brush with art), I came into the world.

I grew up in a free-spirited, idyllic wilderness until my existence was reported to the authorities in the form of a birth certificate. At eight years old, after some home schooling and experimental education, I was finally sent to public school. By sixteen I left the small town and moved in with my older brother who lived by the sea. A year later I applied and was accepted to the Interlochen Arts Academy in Northern Michigan where I spent my senior year of high school. At eighteen years old, I came to New York City on a scholarship to study theater. The city dazzled me, but after completing the term of study-and perhaps echoing my mother's flight from Barnard on a motorcycle years before-I headed back west, this time to Los Angeles where I landed in a Hollywood Boulevard youth hostel.

It was in the culturally diverse atmosphere of Southern California, amid the palms, cars, and birds of paradise that I began to paint. In a twist of fate that only Hollywood could deliver, I was "discovered" stuck in traffic on Ventura Boulevard and given a record deal, (although I was not a singer). For six months I was under contract as "Ruby Blonde" and was paid to do nothing. Mercifully, the album was never made but I chose to use the free time and money to paint. Inspired by trips through Mexico and Guatemala, I fashioned giant faces from memory, which I painted on oversized pieces of scavenged plywood. I found the act of painting both hypnotic and meditative. So I returned to New York, (via Argentina), to further pursue the serious study of figurative painting technique. We know that in the past realism was discredited as kitsch and blamed for it's ability to appeal to and affect the masses. This inherent accessibility is the reason I choose to paint in the realist tradition.

BORN

November 19th 1977 - Nevada City, California

EDUCATION

Private Study with and Assistant to Steven Assael, 2004-2006
Private Study with Odd Nerdrum, Norway, 2005
Independent Study in Europe, Summer 2005
New York Academy of Art, Master Class with Steven Assael, 2004
The Art Students League of New York, Gregg Kreutz, 2002-2004
Interlochen Arts Academy, Interlochen, Michigan, 1996

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

Rose Freymuth-Frazier "Variation", Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago IL, October 2007

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

The Painters, Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta Georgia, 2007
SOFA New York 2007, The 10th Anniversary, Park Avenue Armory, New York, 2007
Art Chicago 2007, Chicago IL, 2007
Above & Beyond, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago IL, 2007
Emerging Artists 2007, Limner Gallery, Hudson, New York-2007
Radio Netherlands International Inspired by Rembrandt Competition, Amsterdam,The Netherlands, 2007
Salmagundi Annual Scholarship Members Exhibition, Salmagundi Club, New York, 2006
Salmagundi Annual Scholarship Members Exhibition, Salmagundi Club, New York, 2005
Audubon Artists 62nd Annual Juried Exhibition, New York, 2004
Art Students League Juried Members Exhibition, Art Students League of New York, 2004


COLLECTIONS

Seven Bridges Foundation, Greenwich, CT
Diane and John Marek, Chattanooga, TN
Collection of Phil Hillstrom, Seattle, WA
Collection of Dr. Gary Weinman, Cedar Rapids, IA
Collection of Robert Pullman and Holly Rockwell, Los Angeles, CA

PRESS AND REVIEWS

Chicago Tribune, November 9, 2007, REVIEW by Alan Artner, photo of Whispering Sisters
ARTnews October 2007, REVIEW by Margaret Hawkins, photo of Red Head
Chicago Collection, fall/winter 2007, preview by Ann Wiens, photo of Cigar Smoker
Chicago Reader, October 18, 2007, preview, photo of Whispering Sisters

AWARDS AND HONORS

Chairman of the Board Award, Salmagundi Club, 2006
Al Barker Award, Salmagundi Club, 2006
Odd Nerdrum-Summer Residency Program, Norway-2005
Frank Vincent Dumond Memorial Award, Salmagundi Club, 2005
Director's Scholarship, The Art Students League, 2003-2004
Board of Control Scholarship, The Art Students League, 2002
Interlochen Arts Academy Scholarship, 1996

TEACHING

The Art Students League of New York, NYC
Private Workshops

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