NATALIE FRANK: The Raven and The Lion Tamer

"The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic poem on love lost, informs the latest cycle of gouache-and-pastel-chalk drawings by Natalie Frank, whose career-long exploration of eroticism, femininity, and power in Western literature (as written by men and often projected onto women) continues to generate harrowing imagery."

- Jonathan Rider in "Fantastic Terrors"

"Frank gives spectacular form to that [existential] rift, and in serial fashion she collapses time and space through her use of saturated colors, transparent layering of gouache and chalk pastel, exaggerated facial gestures, scale shifts, and figures that seem to materialize and/or disappear before our very eyes."

- Jonathan Rider in "Fantastic Terrors"

"The lions and Bengal tigers could, in another context, symbolize forces beyond our control, but despite the threat that a lion might pose, Frank’s depictions are of comic, lumbering, and docile creatures—more house cats than big cats. These bumbling giants are the submissives in this relationship."

- Jonathan Rider in "Fantastic Terrors"

Natalie Frank (b. 1980 in Austin, TX) received her Master of Fine Arts in 2006 from Columbia University, New York, NY and her Bachelor of Arts in 2002 from Yale University, New Haven, CT. In 2004, Frank was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the National Academy of Fine Art, Oslo, Norway.

Frank has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI; Salon 94, New York, NY; Lyles & King, New York, NY; Half Gallery, New York, NY; Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL; University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, KY; ACME., Los Angeles, CA; Galleria Marie-Laure Fleisch, Rome, Italy; Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX; and The Drawing Center, New York, NY.

She has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; Brattleboro Museum of Art, Brattleboro, VT; The Corcoran, Washington, D.C.; FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; London Museum of Design, London, United Kingdom; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX; National Academy Museum, New York, NY; New York Academy of Art, New York, NY; Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY; Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, among others.

Her work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; The Bunker, Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Palm Beach, FL; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, and elsewhere.

The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.