Philip Frey, Press

Familiar Places: Bjorn Runquist, Connie Hayes, Philip Frey
Suzette McAvoy, The Canvas, Maine Home+Design, August 2010

Philip Frey

Artist Philip Frey creates paintings of Maine that are noted for their vibrant color and exuberant sensibility. "I'm an artist who is trying to joyfully express the surrounding I love through color and a sense of place," he says. An admirer of the French Fauves—the group of late-nineteenth-century artists who used bright, high-pitched colors to liberate art from strict representation—Frey expresses his vision of Maine with a similarly bold palette.

A painter of diverse subjects, from pure landscape views to townscapes, interiors, and still lifes, the common denominator in Frey's art is the simplicity and vitality of his vision. "Seeing that we tend to complicate things with so many ideas and strong emotions, it takes some work to keep things simple," says the artist. It is often the ordinary and everyday that he finds inspiring, such as a particular cast of early morning light or the play of shadows on a bend in the road.

In Opera House, Stop. Stop. it was the building's "bold presence, color and shape" that initially drew him to the scene. Located in a crossroads in Stonington, the opera house is a familiar local landmark. "I wanted to create a playful piece with a limited high-key palette, accentuating the building's iconic stature," says Frey. "In the process of taking photos and sketching, I happened upon a view that had three stop signs, two of which are depicted facing the viewer in the painting. Stop. Stop. Twice—just in case the driver didn't get it the first time. That became the playful part and made the piece."

Frey's lively, expressive paintings reflect his personal optimism and delight in his surroundings. Color light and the physical act of painting are his principal interests, and he generously shares his fondness for them with the viewer. 'Subject matter must be normal in the sense that it does not appear to be sought after so much as simply happening to one,' said the artist Fairfield Porter—a statement that seems to equally apply to Philip Frey's art.

"Working from sketches and photographs, Philip Frey (b. 1967) also seeks to interpret the landscape in his acrylic paintings. His dynamic style and high-pitched palette derive from a keen admiration for the fauvists, those revolutionary French painters who liberated representation in the early years of the twentieth century. Careening brushstrokes turn the island cliffs and their surroundings into a frenzied landscape."

Carl Little

Art of Monhegan Island, 2004

Color these landscapes luminous

"There's nothing still in Frey's portrayals of Mount Desert Island. The colors crackle on his canvases. His urgent brushstrokes capture the scene in transition. He understands that the landscape changes from moment to moment - the light, the wind, the water - and conveys that endless motion.

His watercolors are bold and saturated with color, yet they feel more tranquil. Frey draws inspiration from Asian calligraphy, which is apparent, but they also reference Maine painters John Marin and Neil Welliver.

Especially captivating is his "Full Moon Hike, Cadillac Mountain." What looks like breaking waves at first glance is actually a snow-capped mountain, glimmering with gold leaf where the light hits the snow."

Kristen Andresen

Bangor Daily News , 2002

"[Mr. Frey's] approach recalls certain contemporary emulators of Marsden Hartley, including Philip Barter and David Bates. Where Hartley's famous crashing wave at Schoodic was monumental, Mr. Frey's appears to leap with joy into the a

Carl Lilttle

The Bar Harbor Times, 2002

"SULLIVAN — The neatly graded and pebbled track leading off a fire road, through a spruce woods, and up to Philip Frey’s studio has an Oriental perfection to it, reminiscent of Japanese rock gardens carefully swept and every grain of sand in place.

This is appropriate because, even though his studio is located in a rustic clunker of a former machine shop, his paintings take their style from the East while also incorporating themes from the Maine backwoods.

Outside the big, red building hangs a sign delicately traced with a circle over a curve, representing the name of the studio, Rising Sun. An empty shell of a hull sits picturesquely on a trailer. Garage-style doors are raised overhead to reveal an airy, two-story space. Bits of metal sit on shelves here and there, looking as though they were left behind for decor from their former incarnation as scrap from the old welding shop.

Philip Frey is a 31-year-old wisp of a man. He wears his black hair mowed to reveal the shape of his head, a colorful vest, and baggy trousers. He is friendly, easy to be with, and modest. He looks at people with genuine interest, his expression is open, and his artwork is fresh and attractive.

He is also well ensconced in the art world, and it is no wonder. Since he graduated cum laude from Syracuse University with a bachelor of fine art degree in 1990, after studying at the Columbus (Ohio) College of Art and Design and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, he has had his work exhibited at 17 galleries around Maine. He has taught over the past few years at the Swans Island School, Ellsworth High School and the Summer Festival of the Arts. He works part-time at the nearby Lunaform, which produces massive, nationally marketed urns for landscaping. A percussionist as well, he has performed with the West African style ensemble Nu Maza Hake, and The Arthur Hall International Dance Company.

It was three years ago, when the galleries were opening their doors for his paintings and charcoal drawings one after another, that he decided to go all out for art. An open studio he held earlier this month is the first time he has done a major mailing and publicity push.
He’s always had a fondness for Oriental motifs, complemented by his studies of Buddhism. A couple of large “tankas” — Buddha sits cheerfully in the middle of one, rich with gold-thread embroidery — cover one wall. Last year, he travelled to Nepal for a month to take a seminar with a Tibetan teacher. At the monasteries he visited, he found that the colors around him, the sense of aesthetics shared by the culture, and the way art is integrated into daily life began to have an influence on the way he sees things.

One wall of the studio is hung with postcard-size watercolors. Using uncomplicated washes, he depicts quickly made, abstract landscapes, doodled here and there with black dabs to create a seagull, a shadow or simply a point of emphasis. On another wall are larger works in gouache and acrylic. Although the medium is heavier, the colors remain awash with light. Abstractions abound, divides are sharp, shapes carefully delineated. Ideographs are strategically placed.
It is clear there is a larger idea in these abstractions, which are heavy with symbolism but — endowed with lightness along with pleasing compositions and hues — not overbearing. They work simply as nice paintings.

Then again, they perform well on the meaningful front, too. There is “Rising Moon,” “Great Stupa of Boudhanath,” and “River of Gold,” with its shining river flowing into a ruby-red hillside. “Seed” syllables are planted here and there. One painting prominently displays the word “Hung,” which can be characterized as the first sound of emptiness. “Dzam” is the deity of wealth.
“I tried to make this composition as rich as possible,” he says. It shows a landscape influenced by Maine but flavored by the Orient,with voluptuous, layered hills and a hint of water behind them. A ladder mounting a steep slope represents the 13 steps to enlightenment. Three red seeds are jewels of wisdom.

Contrasted with these glowing works are his charcoal drawings, which found their influence in Scotland and England. Joking that this was his “foggy” period, he displays drawings of a Standing Stone Circle, one of many of the massive, seemingly out-of-place stones found in that part of the world, similar to England’s Stonehenge. Other drawings are attenuated and shadowy: broken flowers on wispy stems are a sad evocation in “Spring Awaits No More.”
Philip Frey no doubt gets his artistic tendencies from his folks, Jim and Mickey Frey, who had some of their crafts on display. Their folk art bird houses and feeders have long been a popular item found at outlets throughout Maine and the nation. Now they are also building Adirondack furniture and frames.

For the elder Mr. Frey, who is really quite trim and youthful-looking, crafts represent a delightful transformation from his former life as bureaucrat in Massachusetts, where the family lived until they moved to Maine in 1982.

“We wanted to move to Maine so badly,” Mr. Frey recalls. For his wife, who has been a nurse for 25 years, finding a job would be easy. “But 20 years ago, Maine was not noted as a place I could find work.”

So he decided to switch to a career that a state like Maine could succor: He hunted down, refinished and resold antiques. He opened a wholesale shop in Ellsworth and, over the years, found himself interested in the old birdhouses he was digging up. After a while, it didn’t seem worthwhile to rebuild them, so he began making his own. He indulged his whimsical side, giving the birdhouses all kinds of unusual treatment. Built to look like miniature lighthouses, log cabins, Capes, and any other kind of structure that pops into his mind, they are yard sculpture just as delightful for people as for birds.

Over the past year, he began building Adirondack twig furniture of young birch and recycled lumber, much of it taken from demolition sites.

This new pursuit, he says, indulges his love of history: People in both Maine and the Adirondacks have a tradition of holing up in the winter and making functional art.

The birdhouses have become a Maine attraction that sell to tourists visiting from all over the world. The venture started out years ago on more of a production basis; 3,000 were turned out each year with the help of his family and sold through wholesale distributors. These days, though, he and his wife build whatever tickles their fancy, usually larger, more elaborate houses, along with the furniture. Part of the fun is hopping into their camper and traveling to antique and craft shows throughout New England to sell their wares."

Laurie Schreiber

Ellsworth Weekly, 1999