Alyce Frank (1932 – January 16, 2024) was an American landscape painter.

Early life

Frank was born in

New Iberia, Louisiana New Iberia (; ) is the largest city in and the parish seat of Iberia Parish, Louisiana, Iberia Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The city of New Iberia is located approximately southeast of Lafayette, Louisiana, Lafayette, and forms part of ...

, in 1932. She moved to

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

and

Tulsa Tulsa ( ) is the second-most-populous city in the state of Oklahoma, after Oklahoma City, and the 48th-most-populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tul ...

at a young age. At the age of 15, she applied to a liberal arts program and was accepted at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, graduating three years later, in 1950. She moved to Los Angeles, where she attended graduate school at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

and the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

(USC). At USC she met Larry Frank, an aspiring filmmaker; they married in 1953. For ten years, she worked on educational films that her husband produced. Her work as a

film editor Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film stock, film which increasingly involves the use Digital cinema, of digital ...

helped cultivate her sense of composition, something that served her well when she took up painting.

Career

She moved to

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

in 1962 and began painting in 1973, specializing in boldly colored landscape paintings influenced by

fauvism Fauvism ( ) is a style of painting and an art movement that emerged in France at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the style of (, ''the wild beasts''), a group of modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong col ...

and

German expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...

. In 1983, she was selected for a master class with

Richard Diebenkorn Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he began ...

at the Santa Fe Institute of Art. Frank collaborates with many artists in nearby

Taos, New Mexico Taos () is a town in Taos County, New Mexico, Taos County, in the north-central region of New Mexico in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Initially founded in 1615, it was intermittently occupied until its formal establishment in 1795 by Santa Fe ...

, and refers to herself as a "Taos Expressionist". She is a long-time painting partner of Taos artist Barbara Zaring. Over 26 years, she created a large body of work, completing more than 600 canvases, primarily large landscapes as well as nearly one hundred portraits. Her works were collected into the book ''The Magical Realism of Alyce Frank'' by Joseph Dispenza in 1999. Her painting ''The Upper Falls at Yosemite'' (ca. 1996) was part of an exhibition on the art of

Yosemite Yosemite National Park ( ) is a national park of the United States in California. It is bordered on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service ...

which appeared at the

Autry National Center The Autry Museum of the American West (Autry National Center) is a museum in Los Angeles, California, dedicated to exploring an inclusive history of the American West. Founded in 1988, the museum presents a wide range of exhibitions and pub ...

, the

Oakland Museum of California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

, the

Nevada Museum of Art The Nevada Museum of Art, is an art museum in Reno, Nevada. Located at 160 West Liberty Street in Reno, it is the only American Alliance of Museums (AAM) accredited art museum in the state of Nevada. The museum has chosen a thematic approach, pl ...

and the

Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is an art museum in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The Eiteljorg houses an extensive collection of visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as Western Ame ...

from 2006 to 2008.

Personal life

She was a resident of Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, and was married to Larry Frank, a filmmaker and author, until his death. They collected Native American and Hispano American art and artifacts. They had three children. She died in Santa Cruz, California on January 16, 2024.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Frank, Alyce 1932 births 2024 deaths 20th-century American women painters 20th-century American painters Artists from Louisiana Painters from New Mexico University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of Chicago alumni University of Southern California alumni People from New Iberia, Louisiana 21st-century American women painters 21st-century American painters