AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

Fastidious? Well, keen. Weird? More eccentric, really. Naughty? Perhaps a tad voyeuristic. Perhaps.

Frank Kirk’s paintings are cinematic in scale and yet intimate in their detail. Trees are not simply covered in leaves, they have a definite number of leaves. You can count them. Moreover, each one is modeled to show dimension. Each one reflects light a little differently. And yet, the trees and the topiaries in Kirk’s paintings can be enormous. In some of his works, ten to fifteen square feet of canvas are covered by dense areas of carefully painted leaves. Often the cinematic effects can be seen in the rhythm and gyre of the trees, shrubs and grasses. Trees sometimes weave, shrubs writhe, grasses roil.

For his paintings of interiors and his nocturnes, the lighting is often dramatic, another nod to his preference for the cinematic. Edward Hopper, an artistic father of sorts, reportedly loved the cinema, and incorporated the camera’s strange sense of remove, its preference for formal composition, and its dramatic lighting into many of his most famous urban scenes. While Kirk has never cited Hopper as an influence, the comparison is telling.

Kirk does cite the artist Francis Criss as influential, a painter prized for his Precisionist paintings of New York. As with the work of Criss, Kirk’s paintings are populated by figures whose placement seems more defined by compositional necessity than by their relationship as people. His figures often seem as separated from one another as the trees do from the buildings and just as marvelous in their formal complexity. Their remove excites a kind of frisson - a dramatic tension that can go from haunting to titillating from one painting to the next. It is as if the viewer has arrived in the middle of a story, the beginning unfathomable and the ending uncertain. The effect is to intrigue and involve.

And what icon more intriguing than the beautiful and remote woman? Beautiful and mysterious women are a pronounced and recurring theme. Young, middle-aged, and old – Kirk shows no prejudice except for beauty. Is he trying to arouse prurient interest? Who can say? Perhaps his years on Madison avenue taught him that remote and beautiful women make for powerful images. Perhaps.

COLLECTIONS

Private Collections

Elizabeth Arden
Bill Blass
Alain & Cathy Clenet
Mary Wells/ Harding Lawrence
Charles Moss
Howard & Leslie Russo
Carmine & Caroline Santandria
Jane Trahey
Pauline Trigere

Public Collections

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, Los Angeles, CA

CHRONOLOGY

1933 - Born in Port Jefferson, Long Island, NY
1950 - Graduates from Central High, Long Island, NY
1951 - 1952 Drafted into U.S. Navy
1953 - 1956  Graduates from New York School of Visual Arts (SVA)
1956 - 1963  various odd jobs and under Silas Rhodes worked the desk at the SVA at night
1964 - 1966 Hired by Doyal Dane Bernbach where Kirk worked on Volkswagen campaign
1966 - Directs insertion of 5,500,000 pop-up San Francisco skylines in Sept. 8 issue of “Time”
1967 - 1968 Art Director at Jane Trahey & Partners for Elizabeth Arden, Carte Blanche
1968 -  Creative Director for Jack Tinker & Partners, NY
1969 -  Marries Lynn Gottlieb
1970 - 1971 Head Art Director at Wells Rich & Green, NY for Bensen & Hedges, Alka Seltzer
1971 - 1974 Recruited by Needham Harper & Steers for Honda & Isuzu, moves to Los Angeles
1975 - 1983 Starts his own agency Della Famina & Partners for Max Factor, Gallo Wine
1975 - Travels to England and remarks at the “hedge culture” of the Commonwealth
1984 - After 16 years as an Agency Partner, retires from Advertising to Paint Full-time
1985 - Moves to Ojai, California to paint
1995 - Travels to Far East
1996 - Moves to Santa Barbara, California

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Nashua Telegraph “Financial Company Pops Up with New Ad.” August 30, 1966
2. NH&S People. "A Day in the Life of Frank Kirk." July 1973. p. 1-4