Gestural action, abstracted figures in landscape, and all over painting...these are all part of my art making process. I have for a long time been open to the emotive quality of color and the physical substance of paint. In 2001, I began to systematically study abstraction in its first modern form and to apply this understanding to contemporary painting. Reading Wassily Kandinsky's and Paul Klee's books and theorizing abstraction, my paintings started out with dashes and lines then moved on to include more cubist like planes. I emulated Picabia's and Duchamp's work in this manner. Then, I intuitively created bio-morphic forms much like in a surrealist manner.
Form, color, and movement are used in creating my artwork. At the same time, I allow an existential awareness of the world to be present. Different aspects of mostly modern styles emerge in my semi-automatic process. Accidents and chance are certainly essential to this process. Currently,in early stages, I am masking off different areas of the painting support to heighten ambiguity and complexity. In these pursuits, images may suggest themselves in dashes and forms- like an amalgam of, for instance, van Gogh’s patterned fields. Often the results of my painting are related to forms I studied in a graduate school class: The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Horrible. All of these possibilities guide me.
Frank Wesley lives and works in Bowling Green, KY
About Frank
Exhibitions 2024,Artworks.Inc.Fall Exhibition,Oct.19th -Nov.15th, Kentucky Museum 2nd Floor, WKU Campus, Bowling Green, ky 2024, Artworks.Inc. Members Only Juried Exhibition, Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center, 2nd Floor Gallery on WKU Campus,Bowling Green, KY 2024 Spring Exhibition, Artworks.Inc, Ellis Walker Gallery, April 12- May 10, Bowling Green, KY 2024,Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, Owensboro Art Guild 62 Juried Exhibition, Owensboro, KY 2024,Abound Credit Union, Celebration of the Arts, Kentucky Museum, W.K.U. Campus, Bowling Green, KY 2023 Baker/ Lunt Memorial Exhibition, Nov.21-Dec.30, Downing Museum, Bowling Green. KY 2023 Artworks.Inc, Fall Juried Exhibition, Merit Award-How Now Pastel Push, Juror- Charles Brindley, Oct.18-Nov.17, Kentucky Museum, WKU Campus, Bowling Green, KY
2023, September 28- October 28, Artworks 15th Members Only Exhibit, Ellis Walker Gallery, 1945 Thoroughbred Square, Bowling Green, KY 2023, June 7-July 28. ArtworksInc., Summer Show, Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center, 2nd floor gallery, WKU Campus, Bowling Green, KY
2023, April 28-May 31, Art of Possibilities, Online Show, Minneapolis, MN 2023, ArtworksInc, Spring Show, The Robert and Pat Goodwin Gallery, SKYPAC, Bowling Green, KY
2023, March 4-April 14, Abound Credit Union Celebration of the Arts, Kentucky Museum, WKU Campus, Bowling Green, KY
2023 Winter Juried Exhibition, Artworksbg, Feb.3-March 10, The Robert and Pat Goodwin Gallery, SKYPAC, Bowling Green, KY
2022, 14th AnnualMembers-Only Juried Exhibition, Artworksbg, SKYPAC, Bowling Green, KY
2022, All Kentucky Juried Exhibition at Downing Museum sponsored by Artworksbg, Bowling Green, Kentucky
2022, Visiting Artist One- Person Show, The Window Gallery, July 19-September 24, Downing Museum, Bowling Green, KY A Night of Art Fundraiser Auction for HOTEL INC, April 28, Downing Museum, Bowling Green, KY 2022, Artworksbg Group Spring Show, April 1-30, SKYPAC, Bowling Green, KY 2022, Celebration of the Arts Exhibit, Kentucky Museum, W.K.U. campus, Bowling Green, KY 2022, Artworksbg Group Winter Show, February 1-March 11, SKYPAC, Bowling Green, KY
2021, Jerry E. Baker and Jack Lunt Memorial Art Exhibition, All a Flutter-1st Place, Downing Museum, Bowling Green,KY, Juror- Tiffany Calvert 2021 Bowling Green International Festival Virtual Art Show https://www.bginternationalfest.com/virtual-art-show/2021-art-show/
2020-21 One Person Show, Preservation Tasting Room& Bottle Shop,Bowling Green, Kentucky, 42101
2020 USBank Celebration of the Arts, Kentucky Museum, W.K.U. campus, Bowling Green, Kentucky 2020 Western Kentucky University Art Alumni Show, FAC Galleries,Bowling Green, Kentucky
2019 SALI National Abstract Art Exhibition XV, Greenwood, IN. Exhibit at Garfield Park Arts Center, Indianapolis, IN (Juror Mathew Litteken, Professor Drawing, Painting, and 2-Dimensional Design at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio )
2019 back until 2011, USBank Art Show, Kentucky Museum, Bowling Green, Kentucky
1987, MFA Thesis Show, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
1984, BFA Thesis Show, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky
1983, Capital Arts Center, Bowling Green, KY
Frank Wesley (1958- ) was born in Nashville, Tennessee and came of age in Memphis, Tennessee during the tumultuous days of the civil rights movement. On a late teenage return to Memphis, he was beaten by a group of policeman with nightsticks in the Memphis jail. Given no quarter for his confused mental state, he was finally taken in shackles to a hospital after found en grande Mal in solitary confinement. His road to recovery has been perilous, potholed with a thought disorder and epilepsy since.
Wesley returned to Western Kentucky University and began to study Art and Philosophy, having existential questions on the meaning of life. With premonitions or auras, and partial states of consciousness, normally unexplored areas of his mind were revealed. He studied art movements that looked strongly to the unconscious. Alongside his life, with therapy and medications, his art process brings about the art object with an awareness of an increasingly uncertain world.
wesleyfrank7@gmail.com