A Lifelong Love of Art…

At age seventeen Frank had his first one man show at the Frisch Gallery in New York City. The first painting he sold was to David Rockefeller. Frank’s paintings also were shown at the Chante Pierre Gallery in Aubonne Switzerland (Geneva) and Criteria Arts in London.

The Nativity

Oil paint on canvas, © 2018

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The Ascension

Oil paint on canvas, © 2018

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ARTIST STATEMENT ABOUT
5 paintings: A manifesto of creative redemption in the age of Trump, fascism and lies

Why religion-obsessed art in 2017? Because in an era when Trump hijacked the white evangelical vote mimicking the bitter radicalization of some Muslims, religion is not just relevant—it is deadly. It must be examined and, if necessary, knowledgably attacked and subverted, resisted, obstructed, destroyed and replaced. Thus my paintings of late—and this book—are my personal effort to do my bit in what amounts to a war of ideas.

As we struggle to make sense of the outbreaks of political irrationalism in North America à la Trump and the resurgent European nationalists, and the devaluation of art and culture we risk missing the real message: when calculations of the good life leave out timeless essentials, they don’t work for long. Committed to seeing the individual self as a rational actor, we fail to see that we are deeply unstable and unpredictable spiritual entities.

My art 5 Paintings series expresses both my background of spiritual irrationality and at the same time my more recent and highly skeptical view of religion and all certainty addicts be they believers or atheists.

I embrace this paradox in these paintings not as a compromise but as a truer description of the actual human condition than declaring beliefs. This is personal. In these paintings I depict the Trinity as three old teddy bears. I depict Trump’s credit card as the harbinger of a tsunami of meaningless glitter overwhelming art. In other words I’m commenting on the irrationality of all religious beliefs.
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I’m also trying to unashamedly paint what seems beautiful to me in the most detailed and craft-centric use of oil paint I’ve ever attempted. The titles may be my quirky answer to fundamentalist Christo-fascist absurdities, but the paintings are in deadly and (I hope) beautiful earnest. They may be absurdist and symbolist works drawing on my childhood experiences as referenced by my including my old teddy bears, but they are in the tradition of Hieronymus Bosch.

Bosch was a priest who dared to paint horrifying truths about the nature of spiritual struggle and damnation. My grandchildren are mesmerized by my Bosch art books. We encounter his hybrid creatures, his nightmarish scenarios, his religious and moral framework, and his pictorial versions of contemporary proverbs and idioms. Bosch would have understood why I began painting wooden Pinocchio dolls falling from the sky after Lying Trump’s election. Social, political, and religious symbolism was also his thing.

When the spiritual, paradoxical prime directive is thwarted, we lash out and do so (most ironically) by destroying what little true spirituality remains. We are constantly shaped and reshaped in our interplay with shifting social and cultural conditions.
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I’m doing my bit to react to and fight the Trumpian/Ayn Randian greed religion we’re deluged with as trivial entertainments and silly religion bereft of craft and beauty drives us mad. We have become those who believe absurdities and commit atrocities.

–Frank Schaeffer June 11, 2017