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Artist Spotlight
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Carol Fryd |
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Name: Carol Fryd
City: Miami Beach
Birthplace: Jacksonville, Florida
Artistic Medium: Collage, acrylic paint, watercolor, gouache,
pastel, mixed media
How did you get started?
I went to Saturday morning art lessons at age 10 in the home of an original
avant-garde Miami artist, Peri Fleischman. From the first lesson I knew I
loved painting. Peri even went to New York City to study with Hans Hofmann for
eight weeks. That was quite unusual in the 1940s, to leave a husband and small
child to go to New York to study art. It certainly shocked my mother. That
exposure to Hofmann made a change in the way Peri taught me. Today, Peri lives
in California and we are still in touch.
Who or what are your influences?
The greatest teachers of my mature work were students in New York at the
legendary classes of Hans Hofmann’s. They were James and Nieves Billmyer. So,
once again, Hofmann was influencing my development. Matisse and Picasso were
certainly heroic role models. Lately, I am feeling a kinship with the work of
Stuart Davis. A few years ago, I went to New York and saw a retrospective of
Bonnard. It bowled me over, his amazing use of color and his way of bringing
the background forward. Sometimes the figures in the foreground seem almost like
shadows and blend into the picture as the background's vivid colors come to the
front of the
canvas.
What inspires your work?
The beauty and perfection of nature. The rhythm and color of life in all its
myriad forms and relationships I do not want to reproduce nature, but rather to
transform it and create a new universe on the picture plane. Sometimes that
world is totally abstract and sometimes it has images.
How would you describe your work?
I work in a great variety of mediums but the controlling theme is a strong
sense of composition.
I am a colorist. Colors and their relationships and the tensions between them
excite me. My work is about rhythm and movement. I fold and enfold space.
How does Miami/South Florida influence your work?
The weather brings sun into my work, the lushness of plantings bring
exuberance, and the
variety of cultures and some of the conflicts help create the tension within a
work that is so essential to make a piece energetic and dynamic. I live and
paint in ocean front apartments. Every day I watch the amazing bright blue of
our sky and the ocean change with all its moods.
What has been the most unusual reaction to your work from the public?
A long time acquaintance refused to believe that I, a mother of five, had
created the work shown in the exhibition at the Continuum Gallery. The theme was
"Ending the Tyranny of the Rectangle" and all the works were circular or
irregular in shape. Essentially it was
"coloring outside the lines." Had I lived in a garret she might have believed
it, but she apparently felt innovation was the exclusive province of the
unconventional outsider.
What would you like to achieve as an artist?
Increasing the tensions within my works to achieve more power. Leonardo da
Vinci reportedly
could see as physical lines the energy connections between people. The same
connections exist within a work. The interplay between elements though perhaps
invisible without careful study is what gives a work its individuality and its
power.
Where is your work available?
By appointment at my studio
Upcoming Shows
Edge Theatre/ Edge Gallery presents Art and Play opening. Carol Fryd: New
Works / Hearts of Brightness. Play: Nijinsky's Last Dance. Saturday,
April 14 art reception at 6 p.m., play at 8:30 p.m. 3940 N. Miami Avenue,
Miami. Gallery hours: April 13, 5-7 p.m.; April 15, 4-6 p.m.; April 20-21,
5-7 p.m.; April 22, 4-6 p.m. For performance information, call 786-355-0976.
If you are an artist and would like to be a part of Artist
Spotlight, contact Mary Damiano at
StarrWriter2000@aol.com
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