Dorothy Frey: Close to Home
Home Team, 2017, 30×40 inches, Oil on Canvas
For the blog for the upcoming show, Dorothy Frey: Close to Home, I invited Dorothy to engage in an interview, and she kindly accepted. We discussed painting, painting while parenting, and the evolution of her work from her time as a graduate student at American University to the present.
Eileen Mooney: So, how old is your son?
Dorothy Frey: Six.
Eileen Mooney: Honestly, I couldn't bring myself to identify as an artist for years while I had young children. You know, I got my MFA in 2006, but I had to take a long hiatus because my career materialized in a different way than what I expected, and with having two kids on top of that, along with more graduate school, the art that I did make was sporadic or was done in the service of another project. But for you, maintaining commitment to your work, you know, throughout all of these stages, is a different sort of enterprise.
Dorothy Frey: Well, I didn't have a family until I was 44. So I was continuing being a painter the whole time—you know—I just never put my painting down, and I was always teaching. I taught in DC, In Philly, and then back into Lancaster, where I live now. I pretty much painted landscape-based work that whole time. My MFA was 2002 in DC, and from there after, it was this constant connection to the land, then specifically, to my family farm. I didn't expect I'd end up back in my hometown, but that led to the home farm connection which has generations in the area. One of the two times that I've put landscape aside was in 2012. I quit my one teaching job and my husband and I worked together. Running a construction company didn’t allow for the flexibility to get outside for long stretches of time; when you're adjunct teaching, it's like, oh, you have class Tuesday, Thursday, but Monday, Wednesday, you can go outside if you can catch it, you know. Like, if you can make yourself do it. But so then it's like Monday through Friday–running your own business is all the time. So I had a really hard time getting these big chunks of time to paint outside. So, I started painting from just inside our house. And from that series, there were interior space paintings and a couple still life paintings. And then I started teaching again, in 2017. And then I just went right back outside. It's like, I have time, so I'm going outside.
Eileen Mooney: Oh yes.
Dorothy Frey: And now again, the paintings are inside. I was 4 days away from turning 45 when my son was born. It's like you live a life, basically, then become a parent. So he's 6. And I am just like, this is the biggest adjustment of my entire life in mostly just structuring my time. So that's why I'm like, “Okay, well, you can paint in the evening. You can paint early, early in the morning.” I can paint on these days when he's in school, but I often don't have that chunk of time to just be. I've never been one of those quick, like, plein air painters where they go out for like two hours, and that's their painting. I like to revisit the same site.
Bodum and Bag, 2024, 16×20 inches, Oil on Canvas
…Yeah. So anyway, these paintings are all from our home, and they are kind of a slice of…not a slice of life, but just like a vignette of life. I've kind of enjoyed setting up still life again. I mean, I teach art. So I'm setting up still life all the time. But then, when you set it up for yourself, it's such a different thing. It's like, you know. I micro adjust things and move it over a little to the right or the left. And yeah, funny how, when it's my students, it's real quick. I'm just like, you know, variety: something tall, something low, something diagonal. It has been fun just to re-engage with still life. And most of the things I'm painting are all family items. I'm the youngest of a really big family, and we have so much stuff among us—they could almost be called antiques or collectibles…So these little things that just keep getting shifted from house to house, or this person had it. And now this person has it. And hey, does anybody want this butter churn? I can't throw it away…but I don't want it.
Feels Like a Memory, 2024, 18×18, Acrylic on Board
Dorothy Frey: So that is kind of a constant conversation in our family. And so almost everything I'm painting is something that's special or unique. And the other thing with having a small child in my house is the decor had to change. I had to move things up or away, or pack them so that they don't get, you know, damaged. So he's old enough now that we have a couple of places where I'm like, “Look, these are things that are special to us, and we'll be careful not to hurt them.” And so it's just kind of funny. Now I have him help me. He has set up some of the still lifes that I painted. So it's fun to collaborate.
Eileen Mooney: That's great. I love that. Which ones did he set up? I'm curious.
Dorothy Frey: There's one that is in the show, it's called Special Shelf. It's S-B-S-H-L Shelf. It's spelled like a kid would spell it.
Eileen Mooney: I love that. I'm looking at that one right now. Special-
Dorothy Frey: Special Shelf.
Sbshl Shelf, 2024, 14×18, Acrylic on Canvas
Eileen Mooney: Yes, yes.
Dorothy Frey: That's something I love about having my paintings all be a reflection of daily life.
Eileen Mooney: Yes, absolutely. I know that we have already been talking about this all along, but what is this particular body of work really about for you? I think we kind of answered some of it, as you had talked about how you were really a landscape painter, and were really outside, all the time. And at this point you kind of have to be inside, to be with your son, and this work is obviously a reflection of that.
Dorothy Frey: Yeah, in the last 20 years my work has been about retracing family narratives and conversations on our farm. I build up narratives in my mind about the relationship between us, the architecture and the land. When spaces are passed down through generations, you remember past plans that never came to fruition; the past compared to present. For instance, my mother wanted to build a garage, but we never did. My dad always wanted a pool, but we never got one. And so now, there's a hedge row in this one area. So it's–it's a way of re-living or reprocessing the history of our kind of wants and desires, and then a reflection of what is, during this time, at this moment. This is what is, no matter what we talk about.
My interior space paintings touch on that, but through objects or furniture. Painting inside at our house, it feels like a much more intimate environment, a safe space. Comfort—I think about that a lot. Chaos—the house is a lot messier. And I compare painting the orderly space to the more lived in space; and you know, my husband is a contractor, and we get all the awesome magazines like Dwell and everything. And we both aspire to have that kind of aesthetic. It's so serene and gorgeous, but nothing like –
Eileen Mooney: Like Architectural Digest?
Dorothy Frey: Yeah, like that.
Eileen Mooney: Don't we all…
Dorothy Frey: But we don't! We don't live that way at all. When I paint this pink plaid couch we have from my grandma that's awesome, you know. You would never see this couch in Architectural Digest…It's reality versus your dream world.
Eileen Mooney: That's really an interesting contrast, you know. I love what you said about painting the landscape, but painting your property–you know, and what was, and what it was maybe going to be, and what it is now.
Dorothy Frey: Yes.
Eileen Mooney: What you say reminds me of something I learned when working on my PhD. I did what's called an autoethnography for my dissertation, which was a study of my own experience in order to do a deep dive in order to understand a phenomenon that many people experienced. It is meant to be a contribution to the knowledge about a phenomenon from an insider’s perspective. And that was actually partly what got me, you know, reconnected me with my art honestly, but what I learned from that was that there's not only autoethnographic research, there's also art research. like doing art as a form of research–as a way of knowing. I always knew this as an artist, but I never thought that it was actually a form of actual research. And while that's not exactly what you're doing, or at least not directly, it almost really is what you are doing–or at least how you’re describing it. It's kind of a way of sort of logging the experience of being and living where you grew up. Something sort of anthropological. Do you live in your family home?
Dorothy Frey: Yeah, There were two farms, and I lived in the one from 0 to 21, and then I moved to the one right beside it. The land is connected, and I've lived there since. Except when I studied abroad, or when I was in grad school, but that was alway home base.
Eileen Mooney: Yeah. it's just fascinating like the way that you're talking about, like about what you're painting. It's also even true with your last show, which was landscapes, in 2022, right? I mean, this current show is called Close to Home, right, where you're actually inside the home, you know, but you've been painting home the whole time. Just before, it was outside.
Dorothy Frey: Yeah.
Eileen Mooney: Or you know, for a bunch of years. That's interesting to me. I know you don't have much more time. So one thing I just wanted to ask about was with your interiors. I noticed in a number of the images that you have like this foreground of, like, you know you're capturing I don't know, like the seat that you're sitting in or, you know, the coffee cup that's literally right next to you. I noticed when I was looking at your painting called Mother Lode. I think there's a coffee cup literally right here [indicating just to the left]. And then you've got your son on the couch, and this beautiful light coming in and this lovely interaction with the rug and the window. But then you have another piece that, maybe it's your husband on the couch, and then there's that plaid couch or some sort of chair that you're sitting in. You’re capturing a lot up close in the foreground.
Mother Lode, 2024, 11×14 inches, Acrylic on Canvas
Dorothy Frey: Yeah, I think for sure. I'm almost putting myself into it, you know, right? Really. And I love playing around with that front edge. That was definitely something I learned from Stanley Lewis, like, what's happening along that bottom edge…And I also remember William Barnes used to teach at William and Mary, and he was really close friends with Robert Andrulli, my undergrad professor. And Bob had him come one time and look at our paintings, and it was first time I ever had a visiting artist critique, and he said, “If I had a wish, it would be a way to get into the painting–a pathway into the painting,” and that stuck with me. So I've become very focused on that question, “What do you do along that bottom edge?” The bottom 2 or 3 inches of your painting. Symbolically or metaphorically, I guess that bottom edge really symbolizes me, myself, with the interiors. It's my, it's my direct point of view.
Space Out, 2024, 16×20 inches, Acrylic on Canvas
Eileen Mooney: Right! I totally captured that! I got that from your work.
Dorothy Frey: Yeah. Good.
Eileen Mooney: Yes, and I think I get it from your still lifes, as well. Just with, like, the assortment of objects and the way they're positioned. You know it just has a real feeling of like, this is your home, and this is your stuff.
Dorothy Frey: That's it. I mean, that could be the whole blog right there. This is my home. This is my stuff.
Eileen Mooney: “This is my show.”
Dorothy Frey: Yeah. Exactly. All connected.
Dorothy Frey: Close to Home is on view from December 31, 2024 until January 25, 2025, with an opening reception on Saturday, January 4, from 3-6pm and a closing reception on January 25, from 3-6pm.
