| FRED FOLSOM 212 Hillsboro Drive Wheaton MD 20902 301-681-4688 / fredfolsom.com / fred@folsom.name |
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I was explaining to my old friend Walter Hopps, that my paintings were Neo-Flemish, post Pre-Raphaelite. Ignoring me Walter said, "Fred everything you do is narrative, even your landscapes." |
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“Grisaille in an Ice Storm”
oil on canvas, 60 x 50, 1990.
The James M. Goode collection of American self-portraits
FRED FOLSOM'S ARTIST STATEMENT
For the last 25 years I have enjoyed a modestly successful career, making most of my living from my art sales. I got serious about art in grade school because I couldn't read. I began illustrating my "D" book reports and the art earned me "Cs." Dyslexics don't take to schooling, even painting courses. I am self-taught, having studied the Dutch Masters in museums throughout the world.
1953: My devotion to the classical nude began when I was eight. On my way to school I stopped to admire a brand new car. I was transfixed by the gleaming hood ornament -it was a NAKED CHROMIUM WOMAN! She seemed to be flying. What was she doing there? I was in love and late for school. Inspired, I secretly drew my first female nude. Copying from an art book, I struggled for days. Final erasures and touch ups on the clavicle-pectoral-breast-deltoid area eventually wore a hole in the paper. I vowed a child’s vow, 'Someday I'd paint a figure,' but didn't try it again for a decade. Back to cap guns.
1962: INSPIRATION: I happened to sit next to my sister’s friend on the bus. Judy was a popular, stylish, cheerleader at Wilson High. I asked about her family reunion trip. She seemed upset and wanted to talk. After swearing me to silence, she said it was her first visit to her late father’s hillbilly relatives in Pennsylvania. She confided that she had found a Christmas card with a torn up snapshot of the family. Her cousin, the one nobody ever mentioned, was way in the back. Her mother refused to talk about it and got mad.
The reunion was at a little farm house way out in the middle of nowhere. Judy was relieved that her cousin wasn't there - probably away at school. Everyone was pleasant, but it was a little tense. After a couple of days, Judy went for an afternoon walk in the woods. She was strolling along a path, when silently; out of nowhere, someone took her hand. She had been joined by a naked woman. "She was brown as an acorn.....It was my cousin....She lived in the woods with nothing on -like an Indian. We walked. She was gentle....She liked me..... everyone was sitting on the front porch, we just walked up and sat on the porch swing. God! She looked just like me. She sat next to me at supper -I didn't have to look. My mom knew -everyone knew - but me......... Her hands were hard."
One moment Judy was a trend setter at Wilson High -the next she was on the porch swing with a stone age Amazon goddess. That moment flattened out 10,000 years of civilization. Contexts evaporated -sanity itself foundered. I sometimes wonder what happened to Judy's cousin. The possibilities are all too sad to consider. That scene on the front porch still haunts me to this day - a perfectly serene naked person surrounded by desperate, bundled up relatives, who live in boxes. Much of my life's work has been a series of speculations on that impossible situation.
1964: Martha Mayer Erlebacher was my first year design teacher at Pratt Institute. Martha was very intense. In the middle of one lecture she stopped mid sentence -her eyes locked on me -she walked straight toward me. I was in trouble. She stopped directly in front of me, and said, "The nude is everything-"EVERYTHING!" and, just like that, she returned to teaching. My course was set.
1975: My work had focused on male and female nudes in stark, surreal settings. These 'freeze-frame soap operas' were first shown at Gallery K, beginning our 14 year association. By 2008, my surreal nudes had become contemplative, mood studies. It has taken decades to work my way past the front of the flat painted surface -past the nakedness, to the soulful presence within, and finally, past solitude to stillness.