Dear Frank Gonzales
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 11 seconds. Contains 837 words
Dear Frank,
I wish all natural science illustrations looked exactly like your paintings when I had to look at bio textbooks for hours in grade school. Not only would it have been more interesting, but I would retain information better if I remembered that that particular type of plant had the amazing stripes of blue and yellow framing it.
Spoke Art, a contemporary art curatorial group and gallery based in NYC, recently launched their exhibition TONDO. This group exhibition features artists working within “the round”, or circular compositions. Looking at this group exhibition online is how I came across a particularly eye-catching piece titled Desert Visions (1), a colorful composition full of depth featuring a cactus and accompanying flora as the subject matter. This unique take on a desert scene was my first exposure to the work of Frank Gonzales.
Gonzales is an Arizona-based painter whose main source of inspiration comes from educational material such as books, photography, and online resources. With the collected subject matter, he utilizes it as an opportunity to play with fantasy and realism, combining it with his masterful use of paint and color. He’s featured in a variety of national and international institutions, collections and publications, including American Art Collector Magazine, Juxtapoz, Booooom, Colossal, Ampersand Boutique Hotel in London, and The Orange County Children’s Hospital. (2)
I like to combine elements that may seem believable picture wise, but wouldn’t normally thrive in real life. My compositions are never thought out much beforehand. I like the spontaneity of starting with a background color or single image as a jump off point for the rest of the painting. One image will spark another and the process takes shape from there. I find this way of working to be both exciting and uncertain. My various marks and color glitches mimic this uncertainty resulting in a visual stillness and movement. - frankgonzales.net
Gonzales’ process as a whole is, as he describes, organic. The preparation for paintings is incredibly minimal, with no pre-sketching involved in the process. Once an idea has been conceptualized via the imagination, it is a direct brain-to-hand-to-canvas creation. Experimentation also plays a role in his painting process, occasionally bringing up programs such as Photoshop to create digital collages overlaid onto the traditionally painted image. Many influences make their way into his works, including his early admiration for street graffiti, his roommate’s admiration for birds, his friend peeking his interest into growing carnivorous plants, and so much. Ultimately, Gonzales’ inspiration comes from being alive and experiencing the lives in nature around him. (3)
I will usually have an image or interest in mind and go from there. I don’t sketch out my ideas beforehand. I usually draw straight on the panel or canvas and see what happens. However, I have used Photoshop to collage compositions and really dig how quick it is. Every time I use this approach I always ask myself why I don’t use it more often. I think I just forget. I really do enjoy seeing how the painting unfolds. It allows for decisions to be made along the way, etc. - wowxwow.com
I cannot emphasize enough how much I love Gonzales’ work, even just from an aesthetics standpoint. It’s so special to see his love of the natural world and influences from his homes in the American west shine through his imagery. The colors are bold and bright and highly saturated, without taking away from the natural, more neutral tones of birds and cacti. That can be a tricky balance to achieve in the painting process! But in his compositions, the wildlife present themselves in a way that seems almost magical and able to capture our imaginations in ways that maybe a simple drive-by or walk-by may not be able to do in our day-to-day lives. From my perspective, they’re getting the love, attention and spotlight that they deserve. On top of that, there’s this echo of traditional natural science and history illustrations. The way that the birds, flowers, crystals and plants are rendered with such precision make them appear to be the neon, glitched descendants of 19th century observational drawings. One can see that Gonzales was not lying when he said that he pays close attention to nature textbook imagery.
Reading his interviews and artist biographies, one can tell that this artist is so incredibly in love with what he does and gets a true joy out of creating paintings that make both himself and his patrons happy. That’s something many artists aspire to do, and it’s quite the admirable trait. The economic health of the 21st century can make it easy to get lost in the job-like grind of creating artwork and to forget what it’s like to work with subject matter that comes from the place of “I just really like to do this” or “I just love birds”. Myself? I just love painting skulls and flowers and swirly shapes. I need to remember to always revisit that feeling, and I can thank Frank Gonzales’ paintings for making sure I never forget to.
-Sasha