KATHLEEN FRANK

SOLO + DUAL MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS

NORTHWEST MONTANA HISTORY MUSEUM
SOLO EXHIBITION / SUMMER 2023
KALISPELL, MONTANA

INTERNATIONAL ART MUSEUM OF AMERICA
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
SOLO EXHIBITION / SPRING 2024

MONDAK HERITAGE CENTER - ART AND HISTORY MUSEUM
SOLO EXHIBITION / SUMMER 2024
SIDNEY, MONTANA

WATERWORKS ART MUSEUM
DUAL EXHIBITION WITH JEFF CORWIN / SPRING 2025
MILES CITY, MONTANA

Peaks of the High Lonely   oil on canvas   41.5"x31.5"   2022

GLOBAL PRESS

APRICITY MAGAZINE
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

CALYX, A JOURNAL OF ART + LITERATURE BY AND FOR WOMEN
CORVALLIS, OREGON

COUNTERCLOCK MAGAZINE
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

ABANDON JOURNAL
AUSTIN, TEXAS

ART UP MI MAGAZINE
MILAN, ITALY

BAR BULLETIN - COVER
THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE NEW MEXICO STATE BAR

DREAM NOIR MAGAZINE
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

ARLIJO
THE ARLINGTON LITERARY JOURNAL, VIRGINIA

LOUPE ART GLOBAL
GLOBAL STREAMING PLATFORM: PLUTO TV + AMAZON + FIRE + XUMO + SAMSUNG + COMCAST + XFINITY + APPLE TV

Kathleen Frank and her corgi, "Bones"

PAINTER KATHLEEN FRANK, AT AGE 78, STILL HIKING IN PURSUIT
OF THE PERFECT LANDSCAPE

Even at age 78, Kathleen Frank feels she still has hundreds more miles to trek in her quest to paint breathtaking landscapes. She is in love with nature! The brilliance and vivaciousness of the natural world is what makes Frank’s heart sing and this compels her to hike to seek out magnificent vistas to capture in her paintings.

Over the years, Frank has hiked wherever she is - the colorful and uniquely rugged landscapes of the red rock, arroyos and mesas in the Southwest U.S.; California’s majestic Sierra Nevada Mountains with granite peaks, evergreens and alpine lakes; the oaks set in the undulating, yellow California foothills of her Marin County homeland; Colorado and its cattle, aspen and soaring mountains; the verdant farms and rolling ridges of Pennsylvania; and states in between. Several times each year, Frank travels to various parts of the American West/Southwest. She composes with her camera, often favoring scenes from a towering viewpoint, looming over the swath of land below with expansive panoramic views. Her intrepid wanderings may take some serious, long-distance hiking, but she is never timid about climbing, trudging and scrambling to reach the sought-after sweep or bird’s-eye view of the landscapes.

She adapted to travel restrictions in the past few years by taking daily walks with her corgis in the expansive and wild arroyo near her Santa Fe, New Mexico home in view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Arrested by the smaller gestures of nature, she photographed the winding paths, the shadows and light on the banks, the textures of the bushes and designs created by previous water flow.

Her most recent foray was from the mountains to the plains of the Big Sky Country of Montana. She and a friend drove to Montana from New Mexico, pulling a little camper behind them. They camped and hiked every day, and she captured images for her upcoming solo museum exhibitions at Northwest Montana History Museum, Kalispell, Montana; MonDak Heritage Center | Art & History Museum, Sidney, Montana; St. George Museum of Art, St. George, Utah; Fine Arts Gallery/University of New Mexico Valencia, Los Lunas, New Mexico; and International Art Museum of America, San Francisco, California.

The River of No Return   oil on canvas   31.5"x41.5"   2022

Raised in Northern California by adventurous parents - teachers who hosted hundreds of foreign students in their home and also traveled around the globe with Frank and her sister during their free summers, Frank’s early exposure to a diversity of topographies, cultures and artistic styles was instrumental in the formation of her world view. She earned a BA in Fine Art and Design from San Jose State University, California in 1967 and a California Teacher’s Certification in Art Education in 1968. Her first job was on Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert during the Vietnam War era. There she met her husband, an Air Force flight test engineer, who later received his PhD in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. While in Colorado, Frank taught art and was introduced to woodcarving.

In Pennsylvania, where the family had moved for her husband’s university position, that woodcarving led to a printmaking program at Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Arts degree in 1993 for Frank. In Pennsylvania, she taught printmaking and costume design at The Greer School, she co-founded the Printmakers Studio Workshop of Central Pennsylvania and was a founding member of Farmland Preservation Artists of Central Pennsylvania.

Her wanderlust unabated, she continued to travel the globe with her husband and children, meeting and learning from artists around the world. The family made several canoe portaging trips to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada where she was introduced to the paintings of the Group of Seven, which became a strong influence on her art. Frank and her husband bought a small home in Santa Fe, New Mexico and spent vacations and holidays there, as well as at a family cabin in the Sierra Mountains in California.

She began a gradual shift to painting in a style reminiscent of the marks of a woodcarver and printmaker. The printmaker in her reflexively favors a semblance of regularity and symmetry among the unpredictability of a landscape. Frank credits pattern as an aid in the seeing of her paintings, leading the eyes around tranquil scenery and robust pageantry, beckoning the viewer to see nature’s resplendent unguarded emotion asserting itself.

In her studio, she selects the images she wants to paint. Frank examines every photo; any one may be a gem in disguise. She likens this part of her process to that of figuring out a puzzle. Spotting where she caught the light and design in all its strangeness and beauty challenges her and delights her.

Return to Donner   oil on canvas   58"x36"   2022

Frank studies the foreground, mid-range and background and decides what matters and which peripheral details are not relevant to the overall essence and atmosphere of the image. She might crop, reshape or take things out of balance if that fits the tone of the painting. She acknowledges that she is not above adding a more dramatic sky to a painting – with a husband whose profession was in tropical meteorology and weather, she caught the good weather/bad weather bug since climate was always a topic in their home.

Frank is irresistibly drawn to vibrant color. While the colors in an image will dictate choices to a degree, the process of selecting hues and highlighting or muting is an active one, determined by what features she is choosing to accentuate. When, for instance, her yellows are surrounded by blue-violets, purples and red-violets, she thinks ‘now you’ve got something to look at that is striking and vibrant and joyous.’ This is where the playfulness of artmaking is found for her.

Another part of her painting process in which Frank exults is using oils - she loves the feel of the paint and as she has proclaimed, “Let’s face it, the smell feels like creativity itself.” Her oil paintings begin with a distinctive saturated red/orange backdrop. Using broad single brushstrokes of brilliant color for her overlaid imagery, Frank knows the ground will poke through and feels what would be more joyful than red? She thinks of Swedish Dala horses, Chinese luck symbols and the tropical setting sun. Hints of the red background peek through, creating an understated influence on the overall painting, enhancing yet not diverting from the imagery.

In Frank's extensive career, her devotion and talent has been rewarded with countless museum, university and gallery exhibitions the world over. Frank's resume boasts decades of global press coverage, including feature articles across all media and multiple international radio interviews. Her paintings are in many public and private collections and she is represented by several prestigious galleries nationwide. Art in Embassies, a U.S. Department of State program, recently selected her paintings for the Ambassador’s residence in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and she was the 2020 Curator’s Choice Award recipient from Art in the West at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon.

Frank is nourished by and revels in her perpetual enchantment with nature. An artist profoundly invested in her subject matter, she does not plan to slow down anytime soon.

GLOBAL PRESS

Off Trail in the Pecos   oil on canvas   37.5"x59.5"   2022

REPRESENTING GALLERIES

The Meadow Below Sneffels   oil on canvas   37.5"x49.5"   2022

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