Donna Frostick experiences an openess to nature and its life force that guides the choice of her painting subjects. Some refer to her feeling as animism but it is more subtle than that. “It shapes the way I look at the world,” she says. “Not that I just love the way it looks, its alive and speaks to me in a way.”
A lover of the outdoors, Frostick enjoys hiking and camping in State Parks and other forested areas. It is along the trips that she finds the landscapes she likes to paint. She captures the natural beauty of a place with multiple pictures on her smart phone then spends time in her studio reviewing the shots for images that will make good compositions. She explains, “I am looking for things I can develop into a painting. My interpretation comes in with choosing the colors iPhone’s don’t always capture."
Downstream A Black Pool, Acrylic, 24X48, $1500
Though she has a great appreciation for contemporary art, Frostick considers her style to be realism even if it is not the most important thing about her work. “I feel like realism has been relegated to interior design. I love landscape and the history of landscape art. I am a formalist. I am less interested in the subject than the treatment of the subject,” she says. “Realism is not the point of it. I am trying to make art that is going back to my formalist roots. The subjects are the subjects because they speak to you.”