Frank Holliday at Swivel Gallery

Frank Holliday at Swivel Gallery

By MICHAEL KLEIN February 22, 2025

Back in the day as a gallery owner I would make studio visits on Mondays… now I peruse social media. Eight years ago on Facebook, I discovered and was introduced to the work of Frank Holliday. Ever since I have been following his career with shows in New York; Singapore; Rome and now again in New York at a relatively new gallery called Swivel.

Though Holliday is a child of the 80s club scene, he has been since been building deliberate path as an abstract painter.  His roots lie in Abstract Expressionism like de Kooning and then the romantic visions of JMW Turner. From de Kooning he embraced the dynamics of color, from Turner the creation of atmosphere and from both the magic of painted light.

What I find most admirable of his work is that very independent and solid voice he has made for himself. He is not just trying to paint abstract but to draw meaning from movement and hue. Trained as a dancer, movement and gesture have meaning - so too when translated to canvas.

The style is consistently abstract with explorations of color and texture. Some in the area of reds, others yellow and among my favorites when black is introduced as a contrary element to the prevailing hues at work. In this exhibition, yellow is both bold and formidable, carrying its own message. We look into another world, a world of color and energy, sunlight or cosmic light that explodes across the canvas or bursts in place. The reviews of his last New York show on the eve of the pandemic - Carter Ratcliff wrote, " the meanings of a Holliday painting are the ones we create as we look into its world, entangling ourselves in its scale and its tempo, the grain - the texture - of its energy and the intricate style of its modulations."

When in Rome the press all cheered the paintings exclaiming how his residency there has allowed him to look at Caravaggio and Bernini and commented on how these artists have influenced his vision, energy and imagination. Adding values to his work that comes from this exposure to great works raising the bar for him.

These new vibrant works are the direct result of that exposure and experience - the  variation on a theme which is his methodology. Light and color are his passion and the expanse of colors as it is now presented as the forces of weather: wind rain, the explosion of sunshine across a field. Not the gesture of an Abstract Expressionist painter but the drama of movement, the chorus of colors that unifies the field of the canvas and the collision of colors. Color represents movement, it is both action and pose. True his roots lie in the work of say de Kooning, but to that he brings his very own sense of scale and drama.

Energetic vivacious but none of the suggested emotional drive of an Abstract Expressionist, instead these are purely visual explorations on how color lives, how light appears as we look into these very atmospheric paintings . Electric Ladyland, 2024. oil on canvas, is one elegant  example, thirteen feet in width. The narrative of yellow arriving and dominating the world.

Similarly other works in the show demonstrate light being made: Golden Shadows, 2024 another canvas in which the light born interacts with deep maroon shadows. Atomic Blossom 2024 is self explanatory: a cloud in the center is light transforming into energy, an explosion caught as it happens.

Here is a master at work yet his skills talent and vision are just beginning to be recognized.

His work and this new show represents all that is good in abstract painting now. For many it has become an old fashion language, but Holliday reignites its energy its ability to thrill the viewer and yell marvelous. WM