Rose Freymuth-Frazier
Midlife Madonna, Female in Teal and Red Silk Holding a Persian Cat, Oil Painting
2020

Name: Midlife Madonna, Female in Teal and Red Silk Holding a Persian Cat, Oil Painting
Brand: Rose Freymuth-Frazier
Rating: 5 (60 reviews)

$16,500List Price

About the Item

Painted in the style reminiscent of the Old Master, Freymuth-Frazier brings the subject matter into the present. Here we see a woman - a self portrait - dressed in a sumptuous silk robe and gown, clutching a Persian cat yet with curlers in her hair. Painted during the early days of the pandemic, Rose takes her subjects from her surroundings, not necessarily her own experiences, but rather part of a larger experience of being a woman in today's society. Rose Freymuth-Frazier Midlife Madonna oil on linen 56h x 34w in 142.24h x 86.36w cm RFF047 Rose Freymuth-Frazier 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 quickly placed at a distance via edgy 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.

Creator:
Rose Freymuth-Frazier (1977, American)
Creation Year:
2020
Dimensions:
Height: 56 in (142.24 cm)Width: 34 in (86.36 cm)
Medium:
Linen,Oil
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
21st Century
Framing:
Framing Options Available
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Chicago, IL
Reference Number:
Seller: RFF0471stDibs: LU55438329172

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Rose Freymuth-Frazier

Rose Freymuth-Frazier was born and raised in Nevada City, California - a small gold rush town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. She attended Interlochen Arts Academy, a private boarding arts high school in northern Michigan. Upon graduation she was awarded a scholarship to study theatre at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. After completing her training, and a couple of years spent in Hollywood, (which included a stint on a campy, nighttime teen soap opera), Freymuth-Frazier turned her attention to her other interest - figurative oil painting.

Seeking rigorous, technical training that most schools could not offer, she returned to New York City and studied for two years at the Art Students League. After taking a master class at the New York Academy of Art with Steven Assael, she continued her studies in a tradition common to painters of the past, through full-time apprenticeship. Her first apprenticeship was for two years under Assael in his New York City studio and her second was with Odd Nerdrum in Norway, at his farm and studio on the North Sea.

References from a broad swath of art history can be found in Freymuth-Frazier’s solitary subjects. Influences range from Balthus’s discomforting depictions of preadolescence, and the queen of Kitsch, Margaret Keane’s “Big Eyed” children and animals, to the heavy chiaroscuro and technical rigor of Caravaggio and Rembrandt. This unique combination of classicism and pulp results in something of a hybrid between Lowbrow esthetic and Old Master technique.

Freymuth-Frazier’s work has been exhibited internationally with galleries in Barcelona, Sydney, Amsterdam and across the United States from New York City and Chicago to Seattle and Los Angeles. Her work can be found in private collections internationally, including The Seven Bridges Foundation in Connecticut and the John and Diane Marek Collection in Tennessee. She has received attention and reviews from numerous publications including Playboy Magazine, Ms. Magazine, ArtNews, Hi-Fructose Magazine, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Art Papers, American Artist Magazine and The Huffington Post.

In October 2015, her work was included in Cavalier Galleries extraordinary survey of American realist works, "American Realism: Past to Present", in New York City. Freymuth-Frazier is represented by Cavalier Galleries in New York City, Connecticut and Nantucket and Victor Armendariz Gallery in Chicago. She lives and paints in New York City.