Dana Frankfort

Work by this artist is included in The Hemmings Aurobora Collection.

Dana Frankfort is a Houston-based painter and professor whose work combines bright color, gestural brushwork, abstraction, and layered text. Drawing on the history of abstract painting, her works use language as both image and structure, creating expressive fields where words, color, and painterly movement interact.

Dana Frankfort’s text paintings are platforms for cognitive meaning and their emotive associations. Her use of color –that sometimes abrades and at other times dissolves beneath a painting’s surface — amplifies both gesture and message. In Frankfort’s works on paper published at Aurobora, a single word signifying a state of mind, suddenly becomes a visual touchstone for both artist and audience. As letters become obfuscated or distorted through overprinting and handwork, the literal “text message” is subtly imbued with suggestive innuendos that form an essential bridge for the viewer.

This is where Dana Frankfort’s work morphs from simple street graffiti scrawl to an arena where her choices — text, palette, size, etc– elevates to the level of experience, an experience where the word itself continues to metastasize beyond meaning, back towards the artwork, and back toward the object named.

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; Saint Edwards University, Houston, TX; Rice University, Houston, TX; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Jewish Museum, New York, NY