PHILIP FREY

Philip Frey was born in Portland, Maine in 1967, graduated with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Painting from Syracuse University in 1990, and has studied with master Maine artist, Alan Bray. He maintains a full-time studio practice nestled in the woods along the coast of Downeast Maine and teaches select painting workshops each year. Frey’s primary focus is the color, light, and forms of the landscape as well as the figure and interiors. He paints from direct perception, preferring the dynamic quality, richness, and challenges of working from life. Frey is represented by Carver Hill Gallery, Court-house Gallery Fine Art, Edgewater Gallery, and Greenhut Galleries.

Frey is a nationally exhibiting artist, with a long and steady show history in acclaimed galleries. His work is held in prominent private and corporate collections including: Zillman Art Museum; writer Harlan Coben; The Jackson Laboratory, U.S. Rep-resentative Chellie Pingree; and Dick Wolf Films. The University of Maine Zillman Art Museum mounted a solo exhibition of his work in 2016. Frey has been featured in several publications, including: Art New England, Art of Acadia, Gettysburg Review, Maine Policy Review, and the Maine Sunday Telegram. In 2024 Frey will have a solo exhibi-tion, A Quiet Eye, at Courthouse Gallery Fine Art (Ellsworth, ME).

The monograph, Philip Frey: Here and Now, was published in early 2018. With an introduction by Zillman Art Museum curator George Kinghorn, and essays by art critics Daniel Kany and Carl Little, Philip Frey: Here and Now presents the first in-depth look at Frey’s body of work. Kinghorn highlights Frey’s remarkable ability to render complex motifs by way of dynamic planes of color, while Kany and Little place the artist in an art-historical context. In response to Frey’s role in Maine’s evolving contemporary art scene, Kany sums it up best: “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.”

My paintings center around my ancestral and artistic connection to Maine’s iconic land-scape, working harbors, and intimate interiors. The goal is to make work that speaks to the beauty of what I see, but that is equally about the painting surface, unexpected yet controlled color, and pictorial abstractions that create a sense of movement and change. More recently, I am developing my design systems by applying the rectangular arma-ture, created and used by the Old Masters, to connect subjects and shapes of my paintings to make more dynamic, engaging, and pleasing compositions. – Philip Frey, 2024