I Love YOUR Dog new work by Brian Frink

Maiden Rock, WI - Swan Song Contemporary Arts presents “I Love YOUR Dog” featuring new paintings and drawings of companion animals and flowers by artist Brian Frink. Opening with a reception for the artist on Saturday, October 15 from 4:00 to 6:00 P.M., the exhibition will be on view at Swan Song Gallery (W3557 Main Street Maiden Rock, Wisconsin) through November 20 during public hours: Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10-5:00 and by appointment. For more information, contact Swan Song gallery director Cynde Randall at 612-250-9222 or cynderandall@centurytel.net.




Brian Frink’s most recent paintings and drawings—on view in “I Love YOUR Dog”—make a radical departure from his long-time signature style. For nearly three decades Frink was known for creating large-scale biomorphic abstractions that bridged modernist and post-modernist ideas about making paintings. His blown out, gestural compositions were grounded in the tenants of abstract expressionism, while his playful iconographic style made an irreverent critique of the same. Like many artists of his time, Frink felt compelled to view the past through a lens of irony.



All of this changed quite suddenly and unexpectedly in 2009, when Frink’s daughter implored him to make a portrait of her father-in-law’s dog, Sadie. As a “serious” contemporary artist Frink resisted the idea but ultimately conceded her request, never knowing that by undertaking the task he would reinvent himself as an artist. Working from a photograph, Frink applied nuanced contiguous passages of paint to illuminate the form that had occupied the spirit his in-law’s beloved pet. Through this process Frink found that he became quite weightless and everything that he had previously believed about making art floated away. His epiphany was quite simply this: he loved making this painting. At first he thought that he wouldn’t tell anybody. Then, that he schemed to continue making pet portraits in secret. Ultimately he had to face the fact that his consciousness as an artist had shifted.



Since early 2009, Frink has focused exclusively on painting empathetic portraits of companion animals and lyrical drawings of flowers and plants. “I Love YOUR Dog” testifies to his meditation on sentient beings and the relationships that they sustain. Through this work Frink is most concerned with engagement and the possibilities that exist when separation is vanquished. Indeed his soulful paintings challenge the cynicism of contemporary culture, releasing Frink from the theoretical constraints of post-modern art. We love there creatures and they love us. Frinks cat’s and dogs look us straight in the eye as if to hold us accountable for our stewardship. And what about the rest? If we submit to the trans-species gaze these potential surrogates remind us of our symbiosis with all other species—something that, in truth, holds life together on the planet Earth.

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Brian Frink earned his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has exhibited his work extensively and is represented in numerous private and public collections. Frink has received many grants and awards acknowledging the excellence of his work from foundations and governments agencies including the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Jerome Foundation. Frink is the founder of two facebook artist engagement groups: Rural America Contemporary Art and I Love YOUR Cat, I Love YOUR Dog and serves as a Professor painting and drawing Minnesota State University, Mankato. He and his wife Wilber are the renovators and creative proprietors of rural Mankato’s Poor Farm, a gallery and studio complex presenting an ongoing schedule of exhibitions and cultural events (see www.poorfarmart.com ).