Frank Webster, Fjall Dome, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 60 inches

Frank Webster: Paintings from Iceland

ON VIEW: July 22 – September 16, 2017

OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, July 22, 6 – 9 PM

Frank Webster is a painter who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Webster received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Webster is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2015 NYFA Fellowship in Painting, the Pollock Krasner and the Golden Foundation Individual Artist Award. Webster has shown nationally and internationally, most recently at Loft 8 Gallery in Vienna, Austria. He has shown in solo and group exhibitions in New York at Transmitter Gallery, Blackston Gallery, Storefront Ten Eyck, Sara Meltzer Gallery and White Columns, among others. He has been awarded residencies at The Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program (now called The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program), PS 122, Virginia Commonwealth University, The Ucross Foundation, The Corporation of Yaddo, The Ragdale Foundation and The MacDowell Colony. Most recently he attended residencies at Art Garda, Sirmione, Italy and the Nes Artist Residency, Skagaströnd, Iceland where he developed this current body of work.

STATEMENT

Frank Webster’s strong concern for contemporary environmental issues permeate his recent work on Iceland. After spending time at the Nes Artist Residency in Skagaströnd on the east coast of the bay Húnaflói, Webster commenced a series of paintings depicting the strange and ethereal landscape of northern Iceland. Although at first glance these paintings hark back to the tradition of the sublime and of grand tour travel paintings, on further examination they reveal a wistfulness for wilderness and its passing, permeated with a sense of urgency that is emblematic of our current period of rapid climatic change.