Rose Freymuth-Frazier

figurative painter.

Biography

Born in Nevada City, California, she studied painting at the Art Students League of New York, with Steven Assael privately, and with Odd Nerdrum in Norway. She got her start painting and selling her work wet off the easel in the streets of New York City.

The daughter of an artist and an activist, Freymuth-Frazier often shows the influence of both in her work—free flowing feeling with a subtle undercurrent of moral consciousness. Her paintings are at once ethereal and earthly but maintain an evident allegiance to craft.

She often addresses the mythology, objectification, and struggles of women. She chooses her models carefully: many of them have tattoos, piercings, or other exotic accoutrements. Often they are fellow artists and craftswomen, new mothers, and friends. Occasionally she is her own model. If her subjects appear everyday and familiar, she often places them at a distance with slight modification— scars, moles, bellybutton rings, brass knuckles, pierced nipples, breast pumps, or exaggerated amounts of hair. She paints them on linen or wood panels, placing them in vague color fields and planes rather than literal context. Her work combines rigorous technique, emotional honesty, free brushwork, simple but striking compositions, and idiosyncratic use of color. She has an admitted weakness for beauty as well as subtle confrontation.

She has reinterpreted traditional still life by painting highly commodified or disposable objects, like fashionable shoes and balloons.

Rose Freymuth-Frazier lives and paints in Manhattan. She is represented by the Ann Nathan Gallery in Chicago, where she will have her first solo exhibition in October 2007.