Philip Frey

“As a painter, Philip Frey’s goal is often a project of soft persuasion. We recognize his scenes easily enough. But as we shift our focus from the recognizable subject to the insistent forms, luscious brushwork, and compositional design, the painting slips out of representational focus and back to abstraction, the true place of Frey’s poetry.

Frey often employs the traditional systems of set genres like landscape, marines, interiors, or, among others, figures. But he is just as likely to question these systems as adhere to them. On one hand, this sounds like quintessential Modernist logic. But his use of systems logic to question the structural systems is a marker of contemporary art.

That Frey brings this systems approach to work that can be generally associated with traditional “Maine painting” places him among some of the strongest voices of active “Maine painters,” such as Colin Page, Linda Packard, Roy Germon, and Henry Isaacs. And these artists mark a shift from previous generations. Whereas the boldness of painting had long been delivered with bravura swagger, we now see the leading painters appealing more to the viewers’ intelligence. These artists’ painterly marks are more about skilled effort and perception than about conveying a sense of their inner personality or outer virtuosity. We might say the new model seems to be more Cézanne than van Gogh. And there we find the work of Philip Frey: smart, sensitive, and skillful.”

“Frey always reminds the viewer that there is a brush and a stroke, human energy, embedded in the painting, that the maker is here—but not here.”

“Frey’s art occupies the nexus between contemporary painting and brushy traditionalism. If there is a focus to this new direction in Maine painting, his art is it. ”

“One relishes the immediacy and inventive nature of Frey’s creations, and the dynamic movement in his work. A painting sometimes has a dappled quality as he plays a short brushstrokes on the canvas to build the scene. This painterly technique adds to the sense of motion and shifting light, whether it’s a seascape, a study of a curled-up nude, or a patchwork tidal zone. The planar configurations hark back to the Cubists and Cézanne.”

“Frey is among the many gifted individuals who live and work in a state known for its inspiring beauty and rich artistic history. Most noteworthy of Frey’s work is his brilliance as a colorist. “Here and Now” is the first book about Philip’s artistic journey. His willingness to take risks has kept his work fresh. And his steadfast devotion to perceptual painting—to what lies before him in the here and now—has yielded an abundance of honest and beautiful paintings.”

“Philip Frey is a teller of the story of place. He’s imprinted with—not merely physical place, but something more akin to its interiority and the energy that illuminates it. And so, therefore, are his paintings, whether they be docks and boats, landscapes, living rooms, and staircases, or flowers from his meticulously tended garden. Moment[um] allows us to wander through a deep Frey world. Open and timeless.”