Anglim/Trimble Gallery is pleased to announce A. Frick Vernon: Narratives.

A. Frick Vernon graduated from U.C. Davis in 1969 with a Masters in Painting. Her professors were William T. Wiley, Roy De Forest, and Peter Saul, and her early drawings and paintings reflect the funk milieu on the Davis campus. With active line work and the use of Pop colors, Frick Vernon encapsulated the frenetic freedom that was present in Northern California at the time.

In her exhibition Narratives with Anglim/Trimble, the gallery showcases A. Frick Vernon’s large works on paper from the 1980s and 90s along with a selection of earlier works.

In the large drawings, Frick Vernon showcases the recurring thematic of the Tall Bold Woman. Symbolically armed with a large paintbrush, she strides through a mythical landscape. Her talisman, an owl, often appears, a nodding reference to the goddess Athena. A yellow cat, possibly the avatar to the tall woman, also appears. Small craft in the form of boats, indicate that our heroine is on a journey. What this journey might be no one can say for sure, but images in the work indicate a dystopian background in the form of a burning city. One is left with the feeling that the Tall Bold Woman is intent on saving our planet. At times, she peers from the drawings quizzically to ask, “Are you seeing this?”

Kokopelli, the fertility deity, often appears in the work, as a reference to the influence of the southwest on Frick Vernon’s practice, as well as the fact that Kokopelli is a storyteller who has the capacity to link distant and diverse communities. Within Frick Vernon’s work a pantheon of images and references from Western and Eastern thought are found throughout. Snakes, birds, dogs, cats, and children inhabit the picture plane as companions to our heroine the Tall Bold Woman. Often these references are direct and specific but just as often, they are personal to the artist and a testament to the richness of her interior life.

Anglim/Trimble