Painting what she knows
Dana Frankfort puts on first show in seven years at Inman Gallery
Dana Frankfort is back. In Houston’s art community, she was a distant star for a while — a native daughter who earned her degrees at Brandeis and Yale, came home briefly as a Core Fellow, got noticed early by New York critics and settled into life on the East Coast. A baby girl and a plum teaching job at the University of Houston brought her home two years ago.
She also got back to her studio practice, and the result is her first show at Inman Gallery in seven years.
Highly respected as a painter’s painter, Frankfort is a master of all the techniques involved with applying her medium to canvas: She mixes paint with oil or wax to achieve certain qualities — a shimmer in the past, and now its opposite matte effect — and manipulates it deftly with various tools, layering on color, then sanding and scraping it to create a kind of archaeology that sometimes peeks out from the margins.
A whole lot of the work that’s gone into a canvas isn’t visible by the time she’s done. But a viewer can’t help looking for it as Frankfort tries to decipher the obscured text that is her trademark.
Frankfort borrowed the show’s title, “there was a stone,” from Elizabeth Bishop’s translation of Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s 10-line verse “In the Middle of the Road.” Like the poem’s phrases, the paint on Frankfort’s paintings tumbles and folds into itself.
We met with Frankfort at the gallery last week to learn more.
Q: How and why were you attracted to making text paintings?
A: Early in graduate school, I was making abstract paintings that were Helen Frankenthaler-y. They were very minimal, color-field kind of paintings. But that felt arbitrary. I would put blue on top of pink because I liked blue and pink and thought it looked good. Then I took the advice of a professor to paint what I know instead of what I liked.
I started making paintings of my name, my address, things I had memorized as a child. Things that were not up for debate. I also liked the linguistic component of text. And the compositional aspects of how a K moves this way and then that way.
The other thing the text did for me very quickly was that it triangulated the viewer, the painting and the painter. So, when I paint the word “Kiss,” I’m “kissing” the painting; and then the painting is kissing me back; and then you look at the painting, and it does that to you. It’s also my way of giving you a kiss.
Q: How have your word choices evolved?
A: It’s complicated. Early on, I was painting words like “You.” At this point, I’m trying to choose things that still speak to me but also speak to the act of painting. “Kiss” speaks of what it means to touch a canvas with paint, but there are also all the other associations. The word can’t just be important to me. It can’t just be something like “pickles” because I like pickles. There have to be multiple associations that refer to the human experience as well as to what it means to be a painting.
Q: Why make the text so messy and nearly illegible?
A: In the past, my work has been more legible. But with this show in particular, I’ve been thinking about a spectrum in which paintings can exist: How far out can they go before the whole idea just falls apart? There are vestiges of text, but there are no paintings here where there is no text. The letters give me a structure around which to set up these color combinations and paint experiences — the scraping, the opacity/transparency atmosphere.
And then there’s how the paintings hang together in a show. If you hang “Lee Lozano” on its own, it says one thing. But if you hang it next to “Rick Owens” it means something else … . Everything is relative. I like creating tension through these new contexts.
I don’t know if I would call it messy. But I definitely like revealing — or not covering — the process. Part of what these paintings are about is the painting processes: scraping, sanding, layering. All of those are different painting moves, and I like showing them. Think of a seashell that washes up on the shore, all crusted and sandy but also very beautiful; the residue of how it has existed is on that seashell. I like paintings to function in the same way.
Q: What do you want to impart to your students? I doubt you allow them to copy you.
A: I don’t. I get very suspicious when I see text in their work. But I hope they’re getting a way of thinking about painting from me. That’s what I got from my professors. Early on in the process, I was taught how to paint. But really what became more important than anything else was, how am I going to think about painting? Someone said to me once that it was more important to have a painting that made them think than to have a painting that was beautiful. That really stuck with me.
Q: If there were a painting in this show you couldn’t part with, which would it be?
A: That’s a hard question. I guess (the big, gray) “In the middle of the road.” I like the memory of making it. And also that it’s one of the newest. And I like the language embedded in the underlayers and the text that is revealed.
The whole body of work … is related to the low horizon line and the big sky. I consider these abstract landscape paintings. And I think of the letter forms as figures in space … like the standing forms at Stonehenge or Easter Island, figures in an atmospheric landscape. The light and the landscape references Houston’s low horizon line and wet, cloudy sky.
In the past, my paintings have been very shiny; I mixed a lot of varnish and oil into the oil paint. This is the first time I’ve wanted the paint to be more matte. I’ve mixed a lot of cold wax into the oil paint … . It’s something I’m excited about.
Q: What led to that?
A: I did a residency in Idaho with a monotype print shop. I was working on large pieces of plexiglass and running them through the press. It was like pushing the layers into each other when you peel up the paper. If you make a brush mark on canvas, you can see the speed. I wanted to slow it down a bit. So I started applying paint with a brayer, one of those roller things you use in printmaking. And also adding wax — so there are no drips. I used to have a lot of drips in my painting, but wax just kind of stays where you put it.
Q: Why, other than job and family, is Houston the right place for you now?
A: I felt like I could thrive here. I lived in New York for 11 years, then moved to Boston because I was teaching at Boston University. I was ready to get back to Texas. I had stayed in touch with all of my painter friends here. It just feels like there’s a real painting community. I’d choose Houston over New York at this point because it’s a more livable city and more sustainable. I love being here. And people pass through all the time, so I can pull people into my studio — people that I trust. I like the feedback, and the dialogue and conversation.