Morning Sun Far Shore, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Nature Study Pennsylvania-based artist KIRBY FREDENDALL paints modernist landscapes that seek to engender the feelings of introspection and calm she experiences in the outdoors. BY JASON EDWARD KAUFMAN
192 LUXURY MAGAZINE SPRING 2020 LUXURY MAGAZINE SPRING 2020 193 irby Fredendall enjoyed painting She paints in the second floor of the building of abstraction and impressionism conveys as a child but never imagined and uses the ground floor as a showcase fleeting effects of light, seasons, and a career as an artist. Even still, for her works, mainly oil paintings of weather in a way that really lets you feel the writing was on the wall. She lakeside scenes. the scene. Her recording of these peaceful grew up on the western bank of Fredendall earned a B.A. in art history moments of reverie and delight in a solitary Kthe Delaware River, in a rural region known from Duke University in 1988, and after encounter with nature has struck a chord as Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It was here, a course at Le Cordon Bleu in London, with her audience. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, returned home to work as a pastry chef. Then Fredendall’s artworks have been presented that the Pennsylvania impressionists took she befriended a group of art students from in numerous group and solo shows, mainly up residence in inexpensive farmhouses and the University of Pennsylvania and began in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and she has disused industrial properties. They set about making abstract paintings, some of which had a one-artist exhibition at the Michener painting sylvan fields and rustic scenes along were exhibited and sold locally. Because she Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. the river and the once-bustling Delaware needed a day job, she completed an M.Ed. in Modestly priced, her works are now Canal. The whole region remains a nexus of 1992 in art education at Arcadia University represented by Bluestone Fine Art Gallery artists and craftspeople. and became the visual art instructor at (bluestone-gallery.com) in Philadelphia, Fredendall, born in 1966, was raised in the the Solebury School, a private college- Box Heart Gallery (boxheartgallery.com) in county, originally in Carversville, and now preparatory academy. Pittsburgh, and Candita Clayton Gallery lives in the village of New Hope, a former It was around five years ago that (canditaclaytongallery.com) in Pawtucket, mill town 40 miles from Philadelphia. She Fredendall’s abstraction gave way to loosely Rhode Island. and her husband, Alex Damevski, share an rendered landscape paintings that feature In her New Hope studio, she discussed 18th-century house on a sparsely populated trees and an expanse of water leading to a growing up in Bucks County, the evolution two-lane road that cuts through the fields. distant wooded shore beneath a luminous of her style and process, and how a savvy Her studio is in an adjacent white-clapboard sky. She began repeating the subject matter, business coach helped jump-start the career structure that once housed a general store. but varying the palette. Her soft-focus blend she never dreamed of. Finding a Path 5, oil on acid-etched tin, 14 x 12 inches
194 LUXURY MAGAZINE SPRING 2020 LUXURY MAGAZINE SPRING 2020 195 Glimpse of Spring, oil on panel, 12 x 48 inches
FOUNDATION WORK
What was Carversville like growing up? weekend meals with Jan Cullen, another my school and I was the art-nerd kid, always I didn’t know what I was going to do. I loved Describe your early work. studio and make images that were just Everybody knew everybody, and everybody artist who lived in the other converted mill. in the art room making stuff instead of London and didn’t want to come home. When I used to paint landscapes, I was less intuitive. Some were based on petroglyphs still knows everybody. My father grew up One of my best friends was the grand- going outside to play at recess. That’s when I decided to take a course at Le drawn to the vista than to the close-up—the that I saw on a trip to New Mexico, and nearby and had a career building homes in daughter of the celebrated woodworker Cordon Bleu cooking school. turning shape of a branch, the textures and others were drawn from the garden. Then historic styles. He and my mother, who is George Nakashima. We would swim in his Did you consider going to school to colors on the wood, the reflections on the I completely pulled away from landscape from Indiana, moved to Carversville because pool, sit in his teahouse, and wander around become an artist? How did you start painting? water. It wasn’t so much about describing a and started painting abstractions with lots the older homes were affordable for young his wood-storage house—places that people I got straight As and liked math, so it was Shortly after I came home from London, I scene as pulling out elements—the color, the of turns and twists. people and artists. They had a beautiful now visit on tours. The children’s book assumed I would be premed. Starting at befriended a landscape painter who was light, the texture. During my teaching degree, All of the elements came from nature, 18th-century stone house that cost them authors Stan and Jan Berenstain lived over Duke University, I was convinced that I working for my dad building houses. He and my painting teacher, Betsey Batchelor, but there was an aspect that had to do with $8,000 in 1964. in Solebury near James Michener, right up would be a doctor and make art on the side. his friends were making art and hanging encouraged me to explore abstracting the trying to get across a sense of time and Many of their friends and neighbors the road from the school where I teach. After a particularly bad chemistry test, I took out in each other’s studios discussing their landscape. The color started to get more memory. We carry within us our ancestors, were artists. The painter Charles Ward All of that is to say that I grew up in a very the advice of a friend and tried an art history work, and that blew me away. I would go expressive than representational. A tree and every experience that we have had is was across the street and I took piano art-rich environment. class, and I loved the professor. It was with him on painting trips, and I started would become teal and the water would still within us. In the paintings, I was trying lessons from his wife. Their house was a like he tapped into something in me that painting and even selling some work. I become orange. I was new at painting so I to create layers that allow you to look in trip—old, dark, lots of velvet drapery, two Were your parents interested in the arts? was already there, so I dropped everything quit my job as a pastry chef and went to started to play with it because it was fun. and imagine that kind of experience. I grand pianos, and piles of Ward’s work. The My parents were collectors of prints and science-related and majored in art history. graduate school to get certified to teach titled some of these paintings Ancestors or sculptor Raymond Barger had a studio in a antiques. My mom was an amateur painter Going to Europe was hugely important. painting and art history K–12. I also started What were you trying to capture? Memory Strands for that reason. If you sit former grist mill downtown with sculpture and her work was all over the house, and her I studied for two months in Florence and helping my mom in her metal shop, where I wasn’t trying to capture anything specific. with them for a long time, then you start grounds for his abstract metal pieces. oil paints were never off-limits to me. Local spent a semester studying British art and she was making lighting fixtures out of tin Things that were visually interesting to me to see people, and I honestly did not put Our whole family sat for portraits and had visiting artists would conduct workshops in architecture in London. After I graduated, that she sold in wholesale trade shows. got internalized, and I would go into the them in there intentionally.
196 LUXURY MAGAZINE SPRING 2020 LUXURY MAGAZINE SPRING 2020 197 Blue Twilight, oil on panel, 20 x 60 inches
SETTING THE SCENE
How did you make the transition to imagery drawn from the landscape, mainly the amazing water and trees of Mondrian. lakes, but it’s important that my landscape either work out of my imagination or I’ll use where the gesture comes in, getting the painting landscapes? the lake—although I sometimes base my I love how Joan Mitchell manages to put is not about a specific place. I appreciate smaller pastel drawings or little paintings as texture of the water and the feeling of the My family has a house on a small lake in the paintings on places I have traveled to, every color into a painting. beautiful landscapes where people can a jumping-off point. I love that calming, flat water being different than the sky. Adirondacks not far from Lake George, and such as the Dominican Republic, Culebra recognize their cottage or the inn down the horizon where the sky, land, and water meet. I started painting small landscape sketches Island, and Iceland. Do you paint outdoors? road, but I don’t want to be that specific. I’m often trying to knit the three together. Why do you use only oil paint while sitting on the porch. I was still painting I like to be in my studio with my coffee and I’m painting the idea of a place to remind The color on the lake is never the same. and not acrylic? abstractions at home, but one afternoon I Were you influenced by the landscape my music and my light and my materials. I someone of whatever landscape is Sunsets, sunrises, the afternoon sun, being Acrylic dries really quickly and has a surface had a large canvas stretched and no great painting tradition of Bucks County? create pencil, oil, and pastel studies on the important to them. on the lake being in a kayak—a pink may I don’t really like, nor do I like the feeling of idea, so I decided to enlarge one of the I may get labeled a “Bucks County porch overlooking the lake, and then use not look like local color, but it absolutely has its texture on the brush or how it feels when small landscape sketches and I haven’t landscape painter,” but I don’t want to make them for reference in the studio. But I tend Describe your process. existed in my life on that lake. The light and I put it on the canvas. With the abstract looked back since. That first landscape is the same landscapes that someone’s to alter the landscape to my vision, and I First, I draw with a big stick of graphite, the color are soaked into me. There’s a lot paintings I would put paint on the canvas, now hanging in a corporate collection in already painted. I’m more interested in don’t need to be outside to do that. then I mostly cover up the drawing with a of movement and texture in the water and pour turpentine on it, and layer paper over Philadelphia curated by Bridgette Mayer. artists in terms of their use of color and lot of washes. Recently I’ve been drawing, the clouds. Water is the element that’s most it and pull it off. In the landscapes, there’s My work still retains the mark and color of mark. I like to look at less representational Are you painting a particular place? painting, drawing, painting, and leaving important to me. I try to get across the kind more actual brushwork, although I’ve the abstractions, but there is recognizable work, like the pictures of Anselm Kiefer, or The scenes have a feeling of Adirondack lines visible in the finished composition. I of vibration that happens in the light. That’s started to do a little pouring and pressing
198 LUXURY MAGAZINE SPRING 2020 LUXURY MAGAZINE SPRING 2020 199 Sunset Meditation, oil on panel, 24 x 48 inches
paper onto it and pulling it off to get different surfaces. When I paint on tin, I start out with sheets of silvery metal and brush on nitric acid. The sheets are vertical so it creates drips and patterns. And then I rinse it all off and spray it with clear coat and then paint on top of it. You can see the drips through the paint. I love the wet, streaky shadows underneath the painting and the layers that happen. And I love the connection between my mom and the tin.
How do you play with scale? The biggest paintings I do at the moment are 4 by 6 feet because that’s the biggest piece that fits up the stairwell. And that’s the biggest piece that I could fit into my Honda Pilot. But, I love the idea of making a really big painting. I have three new canvases that are 6 by 7 feet. I have found someone who can fabricate really large tin sheets because the biggest my mom and I can make with her shearing equipment is maybe 3 by 2 feet. With a really big metal support I can emphasize the geometry of the landscape with lines and have color as the backdrop to the drawing.
FORGING AHEAD
How have you evolved professionally as a painter? A pivotal moment came when I turned 50. I was making good work and showing it, but Bridgette came for a studio visit while more proactive way. Bridgette helped me Who has collected your work? intermediate, advanced, and AP painting I didn’t have a gallery or consistent sales. I was in transition from abstraction to redefine how I see myself as a successful My open studios have created a great and drawing. We’re the only high school that I decided that it was time to stop coasting landscape. She wasn’t finding a cohesive artist, which gave me the tools to take my network of friends, and friends of friends, I know of that offers a nude figure drawing so I attended a business coaching event idea in the abstractions; then she saw art career to the next level. who collect my work. My galleries have class. I only let kids take it who are super hosted by Bridgette Mayer, one of the top the new landscapes and said, “This is worked to place pieces in private homes. mature and advanced. Some of my kids gallerists in Philadelphia. I paid my $200 and amazing! This is what you need to do.” Her What is the price range for your work? And local art advisors and designers are applying this year to RISD, Pratt, SVA, sat in the front row, and when she said that encouragement put me in that direction. I appreciate that art is expensive for many have been great resources for Parsons, and Tyler, and it helps that their she was going to take on five students as a and love the idea of appealing to all levels corporate collectors. portfolios include figure drawing, which is business coach I decided to sign up. It was What did you do next? of collectors. My smallest paintings start unusual. I have a real opportunity to work expensive, but I was going to either stay I had been in group shows, but in the at $185 for just that reason. I recently Do you still teach? with my students on their art and to help in one place professionally or try to make past three years I have signed with three created a commission that is much I am the only painting and drawing teacher shape their aspirations, which is a big part something of my career. galleries. I put myself out there in a much larger for $4,800. in the Solebury School. I teach beginning, of my life. kirbyfredendall.com u
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