Frances Berry

Artful Nude - Frances Berry - Contemporary - Drawing - Oil Pastel

2019

This piece was inspired by my families’ journey of becoming displaced. Glenrose Ave. was our first home in America and a time of transitioning into a new society.

In POSSIBLE, IMPOSSIBLE, POSSIBLE, Peña combines representational elements of a bright green landscape in the background with a more abstracted silhouette of a house in the middle gr...

In BOOM BUST REPEAT17, Peña creates a silhouette of house and fills it with sharpe-edged shapes that contain gradients and saturated hues of red, green, and violet. He balances these colors with muted tones of orange and yellow . The viewer can create a house that is yet to be built in between the gaps here. In "Boom, Bust, Repeat", Peña remarks on a house and landscape that has yet to take place. The painting is created with watercolor and acrylic paint on paper. In the foreground we see Sintra board or flattened PVC that has been CNC routed. In the "soil" beneath the house are small circular lines that have been hand drawn with India ink. The Sintra board has been cut to reveal arrows in the negative space pointing upwards as to hint at a boom in the market. Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment and national psyche. The realization that both the idealistic pursuit of happiness and the relevance of painting in a technologically driven world informs his practice. With each composition the labor begins with digital composites of a fragmented American landscape in peril —where tension lies in the contrasts between past and present, analog and digital, representation and abstraction, and stability and instability. In his most recent series the American home (stability) and fragmented and shifting landscape (instability) are veiled by a digitally produced mat. Traditionally a mat is, by definition, a flat, thin piece of paper based material included within the picture frame and serves as additional decoration when framing artwork. He activates this commonly overlooked material by using a non-traditional material, Sintra (flattened sheet of PVC), that has a negative digitally drawn image cut-out. This cut-out might, at first glance, look hand cut however, a more astute viewer would realize the precision is mechanical. The mat has been transformed from inactive decoration to digitally produced veil that represents the technologically anxious precision we surround ourselves with. Nick Peña...

This work is a secondary continuation to my "Vanilla Extract" series (2002 - ongoing) which examines the practice of racial positioning in contemporary print media. This piece depic...

Coming soon

FROM A VANISHED GREEN is a multilayer oil, gouache and acrylic painting on paper, with additional use of tyvek and polyester mesh. Through layered silhouettes of hand cut tyvek shape...

Inspired by William Blake's poem – "The grey Monk" Exhibited in Milan (Italy) in 2005. Part of a series o 10 Exclusively on 1stdibs measures are referred to the painting. Passeparto...

Inspired by George Byron's poem – "So, We’ll Go No More a Roving" Exhibited in Milan (Italy) in 2005. Part of a series o 10 Exclusively on 1stdibs measures are referred to the paint...

Inspired by William Blake's poem "The Fairy" Exhibited in Milan (Italy) in 2005. Part of a series o 10 Exclusively on 1stdibs measures are referred to the painting. Passepartout is ...

Inspired by William Blake's poem – "To Morning" Exhibited in Milan (Italy) in 2005. Part of a series o 10 Exclusively on 1stdibs measures are referred to the painting. Passepartout ...

Inspired by George Byron's's poem – "Prometeus" Exhibited in Milan (Italy) in 2005. Part of a series o 10 Exclusively on 1stdibs measures are referred to the painting. Passepartout is 50x35cm Titan! To whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, were nota s things that gods despise; What was thy pity’s recompense? A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe, Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless. George Byron – ( Prometheus ) These paintings on Windsor...

Inspired by George Byrons's poem "Visions of Belshazzar" Exhibited in Milan (Italy) in 2005. Part of a series o 10 Exclusively on 1stdibs measures are referred to the painting. Passepartout is 50x35cm The King was on his throne, The Satraps throng’d the hall: A thousand bright lamps...