THIS WEEK’S MUSE
NATALIE FRANK
“I’ve always wanted to tell stories about women, our bodies, fears, desires, our power and perversions. Women have long been overlooked, underrepresented, denied access. I hope in telling female-centric stories, to change this!”
Natalie Frank is an American artist currently living and working in New York City. Although she is best known as a painter, she has also explored other mediums including sculpture, ceramics, and drawing. She is also an accomplished photographer.
Frank began her career as a figurative painter, but quickly realized this approach “had been done.” Looking at the work of the painters that had gone before her, she questioned the work she was creating and questioned what she was contributing. She turned to a new approach that expressed more of herself, more of her imagination, and more “objective figuration.”
Her work has become characterized by a disturbing, explicit, and often grotesque treatment of subject matters that revolve around themes including women, sexuality, gender, violence, and humanity. She blurs the line between reality and fantasy by blending artistic styles; abstraction and figuration, classical and impressionism – all sitting within the same painting, forming the strands of narrative she is developing on the canvas.
Frank describes her work as feminist. She wants to reclaim the subject matter and narrative of painting from the male control and show women’s roles from a woman’s perspective – to “put their desires on the outside,” and reveal the feminist viewpoint through the work. Her art practice, in dialogue with worldwide conversations about agency, power, gender, and the #MeTOO and TIME’S UP movements, aims to raise questions and provoke dialogue around equality, equity and advocacy for women’s voices.
Women are typically the focus of a painting, her figures often depicted in a changing state, being formed or being taken apart. Opened up and exposed—actually and metaphorically—the female figures tell the story to the viewer. By contrast, male figures, while depicted as strong and aggressive are often abstracted, faceless and anonymous.
The female figures in her series “Cross-Dressing for the Battlefield” are depicted as strong characters that confront the viewer and challenge the stereotypical ideal of what women should look like and how they should behave. Her many works based on traditional fairy tales strip back the stories to their earlier form and expose their intended meaning. These stories often began life as women’s oral tales that articulated real female desires and fears, beliefs and wishes. Tales that were largely created by women for one another. Yet, as a result of years being recast, retold, and revised, through the dominant male lens, their original meaning has been at best diluted into something unrecognizable, at worst used to suppress, stifle, and control women. Here, Frank aims to restore an earlier narrative and by doing so tell a different story.
“Over time their authorship was erased and their voices neutered. I restore the identities of these overlooked female artists and transform their stories to create contemporary, paradigm-breaking female heroines.”
Frank’s approach to creativity is mechanical and practical. She works mostly from photographs, either posed and shot herself, or via found images. The imagery is gathered according to the narrative she is working within, and the artwork follows, revealed through her depiction of the human body.
“I aspire to show life as it is—in all of its sweetness and its horror.”
HAPPENINGS
KIDS’ WINTER BREAK
BUILD A MACHINE!
Tuesday, February 22, from 10:00am–noon
Futuristic & Strange Transports for Kids
With Nate Olin
Throw away the directions! Create your dream machine! Pick from assorted plastic model kits: all the parts you need to design and make the one-of-a-kind ride that announces you have arrived.
Let it fly, roll, or float – possibly do it all! These dream machines have a great history, from Jules Verne to Mad Max. So, get ready to take the road not there!
For kids 9 years of age and older.
$35 – Member, $40 – Non-Member