Santa Fe New Mexico

Born 1944 in western Kentucky, Charles Frizzell has been creating artwork all his life. After graduating from Murray State University in 1967 with a B.S. in Fine Arts, Frizzell headed west, settling in Colorado in 1969. He now lives and works in a small central Colorado town noted for its artistic atmosphere, the Royal Gorge, and the Arkansas River. Charles has out-the-door access to some of the most beautiful scenery in Colorado, as well as the Arkansas River and the Bighorn Sheep canyon.

 

A member of the International Guild of Realism, Frizzell's art is collected internationally, and the list of honors and awards he has received in regional and national exhibitions is extensive. He has been honored with many solo exhibitions in galleries throughout the southwest, as well as participating in numerous group exhibitions. His work is in the permanent collection of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and in the Francis S. King Collection of Western Art at the Pueblo Fine Arts Center in Pueblo, Colorado, where he was also invited to hang a solo exhibition.

 

His landscape paintings have been included three times in the prestigious Arts for the Parks exhibitions, winning a bronze medal once, and being selected for an Arts for the Parks poster once. The inclusion of his fantasy art into "Spectrum 7; The Best of Contemporary Fantastic Art" in 2000 marked his first acceptance into an international juried exhibition. His painting, "Wizard's Vale" accepted into "Spectrum 11" in 2004 was among the 330 accepted pieces out of over 3,000 submitted entries.

 

In 2007, his award winning works from past Phippen Memorial exhibitions were included in the "Winners' Round Up" exhibition at the Phippen Museum in Prescott, AZ. He was juried into the top 100 in the new Paint the Parks exhibition for 2008, with a painting of the Great Sand Dunes. For 2009, his small painting of the beaver ponds on the south slope of Pikes Peak has been accepted into the top 50 Mini paintings for the National Paint America competition. In the mid and late eighties, he worked with artist Frank Howell in his studio in Denver and later at his studio in Santa Fe, NM, doing under-painting and layout work.

 

He is very versatile with style, subject, and media, and although he continues to work with oils on canvas, many of his recent paintings are rendered in acrylics on stretched canvas or prepared panel. He also works with watercolors, pen and ink drawings, graphite drawings, lithography, and a unique mixed media on illustration board. His realistic landscapes reflect his love of and concern for the earth, as well as the changes made to the natural environment by mankind.  His finished watercolors focus on the vanishing way of life of the old time families and the tools they used in adapting to the land.  Many watercolors are sketches or studies for larger oil painting. His mystical figurative images of Native American people have been collected worldwide and published on calendars, note cards, books, CD covers, puzzles, and collector plates, as well as limited edition signed prints and posters available through Frizzell Studios and the galleries which represent his art.

 

His works of fantasy and mysterious lands and figures have opened new avenues of subject matter, and are presented with an authority and a realism to be plausible to all who have had dreams and visions of other realms