“I think listening to some songs can be a lot like looking at a painting. The meaning can vary greatly depending on who’s listening and what they’re feeling at the time and where they’re at in their lives. I love the idea of something being so open to interpretation,” shares Nate Frizzel on his recent show at CHG Circa, “Dark Was The Night”. The show borrows very loose inspiration from 1920s gospel song, “Dark is the Night”. It is what paved the direction Frizzel wanted to go in. The rest, he leaves to the beholder.
Nate Frizzell with gallery owner Jan Corey on opening night.
Stylistically, his pieces represent an exploration of light and color more than anything else. Frizzel achieves a sense of mystery and silence with stark contrasts between the space his figures occupy, and the emptiness of negative space. Modern, every day people emerge from total darkness, but despite his realistic style of painting, this is not reality. They share this space with large predators, as if in a dream. Frizzell adds, “People can be very hard to read but I think almost everyone is able to identify that a bear is strong and a wolf is cautious. But not every animal is just one thing. And neither are we.”
Nate Frizzell’s “Dark Was The Night” is now on view at CHG Circa through December 6th, 2014
All photos courtesy Nate Frizzell/CHG Circa.