Join us for May 2023’s First Friday Gallery Night in our guest gallery lounge! From 4-7pm on Friday, May 5th we will be showcasing new works from painter Frank Shifreen.

Artist Statement

As I see it, an artist can make collectible luxury products or use art as a way of probing the notion of production itself…Using art as a means of forging ideas, philosophy and truth into an alchemical fuse that sheds light on who and what we are. Some artists do both – like Banksy, for example, does successfully. In my art career I paint pictures, but with the same energy I have also created giant events and exhibitions, designed shows and theater productions, created videos and performances. I started an art newspaper, got arrested, made art in the streets, at Raves, and even in the woods and caves where it would not be seen. We are still painting in the caves 30,000 years later.

My kind of artist tries to do it all. We are guerilla fighters always in the trenches. We battle for the right to turn things beautiful and meaningful. We use art as a microscope, a telescope, a game, a dance, an awakening or as James Joyce famously wrote – a wake. We chase the light.

As a kid, I was attracted by the Beat movement. In those long-ago days everyone knew each other. Ginsberg, Kerouac, Eva Hesse. Poets, writers, and actors. I first showed at a gallery on East 2nd Street in New York called Hard Knocks Gallery, at 16 years old. For a while at that time, I was the boyfriend of Jan Kerouac. I have hundreds of videos that I will start posting on YouTube. I will post moving color abstractions, my intense psychotherapy and current discussions and events. I am not famous, not rich, only in a few collections or museums. I was here and joined other souls to transform and make beauty. In Native cultures, it is called the Beauty Way. It is a discipline. The warrior says, “beauty behind me, beauty before me, I will forever travel on the path of beauty”. I will show some of my paintings and videos at Grayhaven and talk about my work.