February 2020
Haynes Galleries presents
“Zoey Frank: Exploring the Ordinary”
February 6 through March 7, 2020
Reception: Thursday, 6pm to 8pm, February 6, 2020
FRANKLIN— In a new exhibition at Haynes Galleries, contemporary painter Zoey Frank is returning with fresh, innovative paintings. “Zoey Frank: Exploring the Ordinary” will showcase Frank’s newest paintings which incorporate brighter colors and abstract & planar designs. The show begins February 6 and continues until March 7, 2020.
Frank will lead an Art Talk beginning at 7pm during the reception, which is from 6pm to 8pm, Thursday, February 6th, the first night of the exhibition. She will give a thorough presentation discussing her background, training, and the direction of her latest paintings. It will provide invaluable insight into Frank’s process with her original paintings used as visual aides.
Trained in a classical atelier setting at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, Frank then completed an MFA at the Laguna College of Art and Design. The combination of a classical training and a more progressive contemporary theory has allowed Frank to use multiple techniques and approaches in one cohesive style.
In her most recent paintings which will be on view during the exhibition Frank has been painting mundane objects she encounters on a daily basis— the same objects we all see everyday. Frank says, “Painting these objects again and again in series mirrors how we engage with them: repetitively and towards a purpose.”
Because the objects painted are unremarkable, Frank focuses on the shapes of the objects themselves and the patterns created in their surroundings. There is no grand narrative to distract from the designs. Frank explains, “Their very banality helps me to turn my focus away from the objects themselves and towards the image as a whole: the flat shapes, the balance of light and dark, and the interaction of color.”
The result is paintings that are remarkably approachable and modern. Houseplant on Tiles mesmerizes with its subdued green tone and repeated tile pattern. The leaves of the houseplant jut out in different directions, their pointed ends leading our eye around the composition.
Interiors like Laundry Room Window allow Frank to play with space and depth. A cool blue door with a glass pane parallel to the painting’s surface acts as a frame, revealing the space behind it doused in warm sunlight. The entire composition is almost like a still frame from a film.
Abstraction has entered Frank’s paintings in her attempt to focus on time and space. She says, “As compositional problems come up, I’ve started using arbitrary planes of color rather than objects to resolve them. This has freed me up to make intuitive changes while I’m painting. As I make changes to balance out the composition, the space of the painting becomes fragmented in a way that interests me.”
That fragmentation is an one of the main takeaways from this new period in Frank’s artistic career. It lends itself to all kinds of scenes and makes those most ordinary objects seem different and interesting.