Becky Frehse
Mixed-media artist is the easiest way for me to describe my studio practice that spans painting and drawing, site-specific installations, photography, and sculptural books made with found objects. My inspirations are eclectic as I weave together ideas borrowed from musical concepts, the natural world, and my experiences in the world as a traveler. Narrative suggestions factor into all of my work with exuberant color, expressive gestural movement, and tactile textural elements.
The Helen S. Smith Gallery at Green River College in Auburn, Washington was the site of my most recent solo show in 2021. Tone Poems featured ten, large-scale paintings inspired by observing my backyard ponds and garden during the pandemic. I learned to observe more closely as plants and water changed from season to season. Perennials returned like anticipated friends and even pond scum intrigues me now.
As I continue with the concept of tone poems as paintings, a term borrowed from music in which a musical piece without words describes a story or event, I am interested in the intersections between abstraction and representation and how visual elements may evoke the sensations of a place or reveal more of a situation. Like a musical score's staff lines, my paintings are built upon horizontal lines with five lines and four spaces that I inscribe into an initial gesso layer to provide a linear, graph-like underpainting. As a composition develops, the score lines disappear and reappear spontaneously while colors, patterns of shapes, and surface textures suggest the notion of a particular place within a pictorial space. Other materials such as embroidery thread, found objects, strings from cellos or violins, (and sometimes actual musical instrument parts) are embedded in or sewn onto a surface to create another layer of spatial depth and lyrical playfulness.
I earned an M.F.A. in painting from Central Washington University and a B.F. A. in painting and drawing from Arizona State University. I am gratified to have received a number of awards and grants during my career, so far. I have enjoyed a long career as an arts educator, and since retiring from teaching in the Art Department at the University of Puget Sound in 2019, I teach privately at my studio in Tacoma.
The Helen S. Smith Gallery at Green River College in Auburn, Washington was the site of my most recent solo show in 2021. Tone Poems featured ten, large-scale paintings inspired by observing my backyard ponds and garden during the pandemic. I learned to observe more closely as plants and water changed from season to season. Perennials returned like anticipated friends and even pond scum intrigues me now.
As I continue with the concept of tone poems as paintings, a term borrowed from music in which a musical piece without words describes a story or event, I am interested in the intersections between abstraction and representation and how visual elements may evoke the sensations of a place or reveal more of a situation. Like a musical score's staff lines, my paintings are built upon horizontal lines with five lines and four spaces that I inscribe into an initial gesso layer to provide a linear, graph-like underpainting. As a composition develops, the score lines disappear and reappear spontaneously while colors, patterns of shapes, and surface textures suggest the notion of a particular place within a pictorial space. Other materials such as embroidery thread, found objects, strings from cellos or violins, (and sometimes actual musical instrument parts) are embedded in or sewn onto a surface to create another layer of spatial depth and lyrical playfulness.
I earned an M.F.A. in painting from Central Washington University and a B.F. A. in painting and drawing from Arizona State University. I am gratified to have received a number of awards and grants during my career, so far. I have enjoyed a long career as an arts educator, and since retiring from teaching in the Art Department at the University of Puget Sound in 2019, I teach privately at my studio in Tacoma.
