Rick Gregg

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.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

It could be argued that cave walls were the canvases for the world’s first landscape paintings, which depict and elevate natural scenery through art, but there is a richer history to consider.

The Netherlands was home to landscapes as a major theme in painting as early as the 1500s, and ink-on-silk paintings in China featured mountains and large bodies of water as far back as the third century. Greeks created vast wall paintings that depicted landscapes and grandiose garden scenes, while in the late 15th century and early 16th century, landscapes were increasingly the subject of watercolor works by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolomeo.

The popularity of religious paintings eventually declined altogether, and by the early 19th century, painters of classical landscapes took to painting out-of-doors (plein-air painting). Paintings of natural scenery were increasingly realistic but romanticized too. Into the 20th century, landscapes remained a major theme for many artists, and while the term “landscape painting” may call to mind images of lush, grassy fields and open seascapes, the genre is characterized by more variety, colors and diverse styles than you may think. Painters working in the photorealist style of landscape painting, for example, seek to create works so lifelike that you may confuse their paint for camera pixels. But if you’re shopping for art to outfit an important room, the work needs to be something with a bit of gravitas (and the right frame is important, too).

Adding a landscape painting to your home can introduce peace and serenity within the confines of your own space. (Some may think of it as an aspirational window of sorts rather than a canvas.) Abstract landscape paintings by the likes of Korean painter Seungyoon Choi or Georgia-based artist Katherine Sandoz, on the other hand, bring pops of color and movement into a room. These landscapes refuse to serve as a background. Elsewhere, Adam Straus’s technology-inspired paintings highlight how our extreme involvement with our devices has removed us from the glory of the world around us. Influenced by modern life and steeped in social commentary, Straus’s landscape paintings make us see our surroundings anew.

Whether you’re seeking works by the world’s most notable names or those authored by underground legends, find a vast collection of landscape paintings on 1stDibs.