Born in 1960, Fred Stonehouse is a Wisconsin painter who has made significant
inroads into the art scenes of Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. Art dealers on the
coasts are now discovering Stonehouse's riveting, unique style.
Similar to his recent paintings,
Stonehouse's prints incorporate haunting portrait heads with antique motifs. His portraits are
'transmuted self-portraits.' Often, Stonehouse adds strange characteristics to the faces, an
alligator-like snout or a worm-like body. He says of his own work, "But I don't look in the
mirror. Sometimes the faces might have only my nose or my eyesˇbut I guess I still think
of them as self-portraits or maybe alter-egos.
According to the critic Frank Lewis, "Few
expressive painters today are able to avoid the overly mannered pseudo-childlike scrawl
of an academic 'hip' expressionism. Stonehouse's marks, on the other hand, always remain
tied more to meaning than style alone. This artist seems to me to be one of the few
contemporary artists who can still find in painting the possibility of honesty and efficacy.
See biography for a full listing of collections and exhibitions
Biography in PDF format (400KB)
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Biography in JPG format (100KB)
