The Haen Gallery

The large–scale landscape paintings of Francis Di Fronzo, nuanced in both color and composition, portray the natural world with a sense of romance and mystery. The artist received his graduate degree at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and his work is reminiscent of the regionalist style of Andrew Wyeth. Di Fronzo’s beginnings as a realist 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.

Di Fronzo 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 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."

Born in San Pedro, 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. In 2004 Di Fronzo 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.