bio

Lesley Frenz (b. 1972) is an artist working in acrylics and watercolors. Born and raised in coastal North Florida, she received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Florida where she studied Art History and Studio Arts. After working in several creative industries, Frenz left Florida in 2011 to travel the West and Northwest with her husband. While traveling, she wrote a successful art blog and began freelance work on behalf of galleries and artists, but never stopped painting. Years of travel and living among such incredible beauty spilled out in January 2013 as she pursued a serious studio practice while continuing to travel. An avid hiker and backpacker, Frenz finds inspiration in wild places and her studio practice is centered around the exploration of the intersectionality between the spiritual and earthbound in the form of abstracted landscape paintings. 

Frenz began exhibiting work in 2015, followed soon by her first solo exhibition in 2016, she is represented by J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle, WA.

Frenz and her husband have found home in Mount Vernon, Washington, a small town nestled in the Skagit Valley between the North Cascade mountains and the Salish Sea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

artist statement

Untamed places speak to and connect us with the raw, earthly spirit born in each of us, but I also believe they have the power to guide our minds and heal our hearts.  

Whether hiking miles of trail deep into the wilderness or a short, solitary walk to a lake or river’s edge, the pulling forth of those memories and the action of putting paint to surface is for me, a restorative act.

In moments of uncertainty or sorrow, I can pour my emotions onto the surface, recalling a place and perhaps a person, and in the process reinvigorating the connection to both. 

Mountainscapes being an undeniable muse, I follow their path, building up layer upon layer of texture and color. I build up and scrape back, echoing the process of the earth’s death and renewal. Aqueous glazes pool and drip, dispersing and disrupting as raindrops falling to the surface. Each painting’s composition is unknown to me until it has been revealed. 

I see these paintings as prayers, as invitations to a sojourn.