LESLEY FRENZ
THE LONGING IS THE RETURN
OPENING RECEPTION - SATURDAY, MARCH 11 2023, FROM 3-6PM
ARTIST MEET & GREET - SATURDAY, MARCH 25 2023, FROM 1-4PM
J. Rinehart Gallery is thrilled to announce our second solo exhibition with acrylic painter and watercolorist, Lesley Frenz. Her exhibition, The Longing is the Return, brings together a collection of emotionally expressive landscape paintings that recall moments of loss and the forever existing connections, still fresh, through longing.
Poet and Scholar Rumi wrote, “the grief you cry out from, draws you toward union.”
Within this exhibition of paintings, longing is the returned message. It is a recollection of memories no matter how far in the past or how fresh the ache. These stirring landscapes do not recall a specific place, but moments, however brief, in which the connection between the living and the dead are clear. The connection, forever existing, unseen yet heard, felt.
Of her work Frenz states: “I felt the energy of the world around me flowing through me, the world that included and will always include my mother. The landscape moving toward me yet floating away into infinity. Drips and runs are reminiscent of the tears that continue, always, just under the surface. But also, a gift, a reminder.”
Lesley Frenz is an artist working in acrylics and watercolors. After working in various creative industries, she began a serious studio practice while pursuing travel. An avid hiker and backpacker, Frenz finds inspiration in wild places and her studio practice is centered around the exploration of the natural world and landscape through its expression in color. Soft and atmospheric, her paintings evoke the vast mystery held in places few truly explore.
Born and raised in coastal North Florida, Frenz received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Florida where she studied Art History and Painting. Her work can be found in various private collections in the US, Canada, and the EU.
In conjunction with The Longing is the Return, an exclusive event will be held by arts writer Beverly Aarons founder of Artists Up Close. We invite you to purchase your ticket for this private hour-long special event and join us for the public Opening Reception afterwards.
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The Longing is the Return
Exhibition Statement
Through my tears I heard a message.
I was crying out for my mother in a way I hadn’t done since she passed into the next life nearly eight years ago. Maybe in a way I never had. Even after all this time, the pain of her loss was as fresh as it ever was.
And I heard the words, “I’m still here”.
As I wept, she answered. My longing was the returned message, as Rumi described in his poem, Love Dogs.
In the poem’s next line, he writes,
the grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
The union I was drawn toward that day wasn’t only a reunion with my mother. It was the certainty of a connection between the living and the dead, between all things– human, animal, plant, water, earth.
Connection to my mother is connection to the earth. How could it not be?
She was my first home, my first experience of life on this earth, my first country, as poet Nayyirah Waheed writes. She is now literally a part of that earth.
As she returned to dust, so will I someday return.
In that way, we are always here, never gone.
These emotionally expressive landscape paintings recall not a specific place on this earth, but moments, however brief, in which I felt myself at the center of a confluence of connectivity. In which I felt the energy of the world around me flowing through me, the world that included and will always include my mother. The landscape moving toward me yet floating away into infinity. Drips and runs are reminiscent of the tears that continue, always, just under the surface. But also, a gift, a reminder.
The connection, forever existing, unseen yet heard, felt.