Francis DiFronzo
Francis DiFronzo
Born in California in 1969, Francis received his B.F.A from California State University, Fullerton. He then came east to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he worked and learned under the guidance of artists Murray Dessner, Jan Baltzell, Sidney Goodman, Vincent Desiderio and Irving Petlin. DiFronzo earned his M.F.A from the Pennsylvania Academy in 1998. In 2004 DiFronzo was awarded the very selective Pew Fellowship, an honor granted to only four painters every four years, as well as the Stobbart Foundation Fellowship in the Arts Award in 1998 and the Liquitex Art in America University Award in 1993. In 2007, DiFronzo was featured in the June issue of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine’s article “Making Their Mark: Three to Watch”.
Francis DiFronzo portrays the natural world with a sense of romance and mystery. His layers of paint create elusive and brilliantly executed surfaces, which are perfectly showcased in his impeccable approach to the light of the sky, the leafy trees, and drifting boats that inhabit his paintings; and he creates these poetic landscapes purely from his imagination. His highly realistic scenes are both beautiful and poetic, but also deeply mysterious, and at times ominous and foreboding. DiFronzo’s unique imagery tells the story of dreams, aspirations, fulfilled and unfulfilled and the travels that take you to these destinations. Eschewing nostalgia and ornamentation, he transforms the ephemera of American landscapes into intense visions, revealing that the most unassuming territories are never as straightforward as they appear.
DiFronzo’s painting technique has helped to underscore his outlook. He works with a “comb brush”, of his own design, comprised of 60-80 individual hairs attached to a wooden stick. Using this comb, he creates images of open fields and rolling hills by tapping the hairs onto a toned panel. After many layers, the result is an infinite expanse of individual blades of grass, rich in tone, detail and hue. DiFronzo says of his method, “Now I understand that this technique really isn’t painting at all. It is, if anything, nothing more than a chant – me sitting on the floor like a monk, mindlessly tapping a landscape and an entire world into existence.” DiFronzo has also experimented with a new technique to paint seascapes, creating sweeping scenes of open water that are rich and complex in color and depth.
“I discovered at a young age that art had the ability to transport me out of my world and into the lives of artists I admired. When I looked at paintings by Andrew Wyeth or Edward Hopper, I felt as though I was momentarily living in the worlds they created. I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted my work to have that power.”
— Francis DiFronzo
“Over the years, I’ve realized I’m fundamentally a storyteller. Like the artists I admired in my youth, I’m using my paintings to transport my audience into a world that is different than their own. I’m drawn to desolate places and bare compositions. My paintings – as stories – are occupied by just a few characters. There is the sky and the Earth, arrowweed and creosote bushes, and perhaps some emblem of human existence… a road, or telephone pole, railcar, automobile, or roadside cafe. I use these characters to create the bones of a story, and to imbue the paintings with some sense of mystery. There’s just enough to draw you in and to keep you engaged.”
— Francis DiFronzo
Francis DiFronzo portrays the natural world with a sense of romance and mystery. His layers of paint create elusive and brilliantly executed surfaces, which are perfectly showcased in his impeccable approach to the light of the sky, the leafy trees, and drifting boats that inhabit his paintings; and he creates these poetic landscapes purely from his imagination. His highly realistic scenes are both beautiful and poetic, but also deeply mysterious, and at times ominous and foreboding. DiFronzo’s unique imagery tells the story of dreams, aspirations, fulfilled and unfulfilled and the travels that take you to these destinations. Eschewing nostalgia and ornamentation, he transforms the ephemera of American landscapes into intense visions, revealing that the most unassuming territories are never as straightforward as they appear.
DiFronzo’s painting technique has helped to underscore his outlook. He works with a “comb brush”, of his own design, comprised of 60-80 individual hairs attached to a wooden stick. Using this comb, he creates images of open fields and rolling hills by tapping the hairs onto a toned panel. After many layers, the result is an infinite expanse of individual blades of grass, rich in tone, detail and hue. DiFronzo says of his method, “Now I understand that this technique really isn’t painting at all. It is, if anything, nothing more than a chant – me sitting on the floor like a monk, mindlessly tapping a landscape and an entire world into existence.” DiFronzo has also experimented with a new technique to paint seascapes, creating sweeping scenes of open water that are rich and complex in color and depth.
“I discovered at a young age that art had the ability to transport me out of my world and into the lives of artists I admired. When I looked at paintings by Andrew Wyeth or Edward Hopper, I felt as though I was momentarily living in the worlds they created. I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted my work to have that power.”
— Francis DiFronzo
“Over the years, I’ve realized I’m fundamentally a storyteller. Like the artists I admired in my youth, I’m using my paintings to transport my audience into a world that is different than their own. I’m drawn to desolate places and bare compositions. My paintings – as stories – are occupied by just a few characters. There is the sky and the Earth, arrowweed and creosote bushes, and perhaps some emblem of human existence… a road, or telephone pole, railcar, automobile, or roadside cafe. I use these characters to create the bones of a story, and to imbue the paintings with some sense of mystery. There’s just enough to draw you in and to keep you engaged.”
— Francis DiFronzo
