Merging graffiti and high art abstraction Dana Frankfort’s paintings occupy a hazy space between verbal and visual communication. Using text as a platform for expressive embellishment each canvas reveals a word or phrase within its sumptuous surface; simple statements such as ‘Believe’, ‘Beyond’, or ‘Paint’ become esoteric starting points for the physical negotiation of painting.


Adapting text as the subject for her paintings, Frankfort distils both the poetic and formal qualities of the written word. Repeatedly scrawled, painted over, scribbled out, and intensified, each slogan becomes abstracted as a series of intersecting lines, curves and angles, their meanings amplified and distorted through the gesture and surface quality of their manifestation.


Simultaneously brutal and ethereal, Frankfort’s canvases draw from the lineage of Howard Hodgkin and Morris Louis in their intensity of colour, impassioned brushstrokes, and linear compositions. The sophistication of Frankfort’s process belies the imperative of her sentiments. The urgency of her aesthetic is contrasted with time consuming processes of sanded surfaces, premeditated spill patterns, and calculated layers of matte and high-gloss finish. Through this considered arbitration, Frankfort frames her text with the complexity of psychological depth, creating a palimpsest of memory and emotive association.