May 5, 2011—May 28, 2011 | Reception Thursday May 5th, 6-8 pm

James Harris Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Dana Frankfort. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the Northwest. Words and phrases are a core element of the artist’s painting practice. Expressively painted into bright fields of color, the words push beyond the formal constructs of painting with their blocky letters that shift in and out of view. Frankfort’s painting vocabulary is an investigation of fore, middle and far ground with her gestural layering of color and brushstroke. In one painting a single word floats across the surface like an expletive, in another, they are woven together declaring the importance of inflection and language.

Titled HIT OR MISS the show is a response to life’s journey and Frankfort’s painting process. The words or phrases appear to be randomly scrawled across the surface but each brush stroke is carefully considered building up the structure and composition of the work. The intense use of color and shifting scale of letters imbues each painting with a fractured emotional intensity. The text is linguistically linked to contemporary verbiage, reflecting the fast paced media bombarded culture of today.

Dana Frankfort was born in 1971 in Houston, Texas. She currently lives and works in Boston. She received her MFA from Yale University and was a Core Fellow at the Glassell School of Art in Houston, Texas. She most recently had a solo show at Inman Gallery in Houston, La Montagne Gallery in Boston and Kantor/Feuer Gallery in Los Angeles. She participated in the exhibition Abstract Americaat the Saatchi Gallery in London and Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism at The Jewish Museum, New York.