Biography from Somerville Manning Gallery:
| In 2004, Philadelphia painter Francis Di Fronzo was awarded one of twelve Pew Fellowship in the Arts. During this pivotal moment in his artistic career, landscape painting became “a stage for everything in life. Anyone who looks at a landscape painting can identify immediately.” In his paintings, Di Fronzo depicts highly realistic scenes of the natural world, which are both beautiful and poetic, but also deeply mysterious, and at times ominous and foreboding.
Di Fronzo’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. Di Fronzo 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.
Born in California in 1969, he received his B.F.A at the University of California, Fullerton. He then came east to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he earned his M.F.A. in 1998. Di Fronzo was also awarded the Liquitex, Art in America University Award in 1993, and the Stobbart Foundation Fellowship in the Arts Award in 1998.
In 2007, Di Fronzo was featured in the June issue of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine’s article “Making Their Mark: Three to Watch”.
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