Frank Kallop
Frank Kallop is an American artist whose natural artistic evolution has developed through several different styles of painting.
In all his work, Frank’s focus is on the visual poetry of light and space, the mystery of shadow and a palpable sense of atmosphere. Investigating direct and indirect techniques, he strives to synthesize the two methods. Frank would rather not use any labels to explain his work and prefers to hear what others have to say about it. None the less, he is displaying many recognized styles of his art on this website: Surrealism & Symbolism, Still Life, Plein Air Landscapes, Portrait & Figure Paintings including the Survivor Series, Abstraction and Collage.
Frank earned a BFA in Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1978. He had been painting in the Surrealistic manner most of his life, tapping into his unconscious mind, bringing that to his consciousness and remaining poised on that razor’s edge for the duration of a painting. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, he worked automatically, in effect, to allow the painting to reveal itself outside of his deliberate control of the process.
Then something new happened; figures began to appear spontaneously in Frank’s work.
In reaction to the new element, he made a deliberate move toward Symbolism and began to consciously orchestrate his paintings, even to the point of making preparatory drawings and collages. Although the figures had been working very well within the context of his art, he wanted to make a conscious shift — to take a new direction — toward Realism.
Frank went on to receive rigorous training in figure drawing, painting and traditional illusionist techniques at the New York Academy of Art, where he earned an MFA in Painting in 2001.
The natural progression of his work has led Frank from surrealism to symbolism and then to realism.
Frank continues to practice “illusionist representations,” and when working in this tradition he’s able to focus his concentration like a meditation—although he also calls it “an excellent way to work on my chops.”
“Quite apart from his technical virtuosity, Frank Kallop’s work moves us because he is a visionary.
A visionary is someone who reaches deeply into the archetypal field to receive and embody universal energies. And a successful visionary is one who returns, as Kallop has, bearing artifacts from that region which connect, deepen and gift us all.”
-James Hollis
Jungian analyst and author of Finding
Meaning in the Second Half of Life.
In 2008, Frank took a seemingly radical shift toward Abstraction. In his continuing and ever evolving career as a painter, the formal qualities he concerned himself with in his realist work; line, shape, value, color and texture, he now explores in completely non-objective abstraction.
Another of his lastest ventures is the Survivor Series.
Art can make us think…it can inspire us…it can enlighten us…it can challenge us – by illustrating an image or an idea in a new, sometimes “better” way.
Art can also be healing – either by the act itself or by its perception.
Frank Kallop has recognized and realized the healing power of Art and has collaborated with patrons who have chosen to utilize Art as part of the healing process. Whether one is struggling with physical, emotional or mental pain or illness; one can come to healing by embracing their bodies and SEEING its beauty – regardless of its frailties, imperfections, and scars – real or imagined.
Frank’s Survivor Series is a collection of commissioned paintings of individuals who have chosen this healing, collaborative path. The first painting in this series was commissioned by a breast cancer Survivor who sought to embrace her body and left breast that was ravaged by cancer, by exposing it in a beautiful recreation of Modigliani’s LaBelle Romaine. The next commission was by a woman who aimed to embrace and celebrate her body and sexuality which had been scarred in an emotional way. This Survivor chose a work of Modigliani as well…
If you would like to utilize Art and Frank Kallop’s talents in this way, please do not hesitate to contact him through this site. Frank will paint you in the style of your favorite figure painting, or if you choose, his own realistic style.
Painting is a solitary work, but Frank’s exploration of archetypal metaphysical themes and symbols and the formal qualities of paint, offers us a common language through which to ponder the universal questions about who we are, how we are interconnected and how meaning is bound to relationship.
Exploring eternal themes — the spiritual quest, time, suffering, dreams, regret, irony, joy, illusion and others — Frank’s paintings illuminate.