about
welcome to frank campion 2.0.
i remember our mother taking us to MoMA when i was about ten or so. we were standing in front of a giant painting of the united states by jasper johns. i noticed that there were grown-ups everywhere and thinking that this was something that adults took seriously, that adults did. this is what really started my journey.
in boston during the 1980s, i showed my work in group shows at the institute of contemporary art, the boston museum of fine arts (which has one of my paintings in their permanent collection), and the danforth museum among others.
i enjoyed a number of critically successful solo shows at the clark gallery and bridgewater state college. after a 30-year career in the advertising business, which brought me to north carolina, i went back into the studio in 2014 and resumed the life of a successful starving artist.
in the studio, clemmons, 2019
in the studio at 197 portland street, boston. probably 1983 or so.
CV + the short form
1972 harvard, bfa
1972-1975 instructor design/drawing/printmaking @ keene state college, keene, nh
1975 (group show) railroad street artists, keene, nh
(group show) the odd god @ cyclorama, boston center for the arts, boston, ma
1976 boston studio burns down
1976-1979 apprentice lithographer @ fox graphics, boston
1981 (group show) boston now: contemporary paintings @ institute of contemporary art, boston, ma
(solo show) @ clark gallery, lincoln, ma
1982 (solo show) @ bridgewater state college, bridgewater, ma
(group show) best of boston, mona berman gallery
1983 (group show) art new england @ danforth museum
(group show) abstract art in new england, currier gallery of art, manchester, nh, virginia polytechnic, va
(solo show) @ clark gallery, lincoln, ma
1984 (group show) boston now: contemporary painting & sculpture @ boston museum of fine arts,
boston, ma
1984 painting acquired by boston museum of fine arts, boston, ma
1985-1989 career in advertising and marketing, boston, ma
1989-2013 career in advertising and marketing in winston-salem, nc
2014 resumes the life of a successful, starving artist
2017 (solo show) @ SECCA (southeastern center for contemporary art), winston-salem, nc
2018 (solo show) luminous geometry @ stella g. contemporary, charlotte, nc
2019 (group show) new year/new artists, long view gallery, washington, dc
(solo show) chasms, canyons, and corridors @ gallery vi, winston-salem, nc
2020 (group show) DRAWN: Concept and Craft @ SECCA (southeastern center for contemporary art),
winston-salem, nc (an international survey of drawing practices with stops in china, serbia, france and new york)
2021 (group show) highlights from the DeCordova collection; abstraction @ deCordova museum, lincoln, ma
(group show) refresh ix; better together @ long view gallery, washington, dc
2022 (group show) the winter show • the greenhill gallery, greensboro, nc
(juried group show) the abstract national exhibition, mark arts/mary r. koch gallery, wichita, ks
2023 (juried group show) jazz @ artspace, richmond, va
(solo show) paintings and works on paper @ the gallery at aware, winston-salem, nc
(solo show) frank campion 2.0 @ elberson fine arts center, salem college, winston-salem, nc
(solo show) dichotomies @ sunset river gallery, calabash, nc
2024 (juried group show) this is the future of non-objective art @ the atlantic gallery, ny, ny
(solo show) frank campion: selected works @ artworks gallery, winston-salem, nc
collections: the boston museum of fine arts, the deCordova Museum, general electric, bank of boston, wang, digital equipment corporation, and numerous private collections in boston, los angeles, miami, charlotte, chicago, las vegas, new york, washington/DC.
+ the long form
so. after college in 1972, i wanted to be a serious artist. i studied art history, design and printmaking. right out of college i taught for a few years at keene state college in keene, nh. this gave me a somewhat stable income and the time to develop my work.
my first major exhibits were railroad street artists in keene and the odd god at the cyclorama in boston. both were group shows with a handful of friends in 1975.
in early 1976, my boston studio burned down and i almost became a full-time lithographer after apprenticing with herb fox at fox graphics in boston.
a few years later, i bumped into a collector who had purchased my work at the cyclorama show. he and his wife had, of course, lost track of me. i told him the whole sorry story. he invited me to dinner a few nights later. over coffee, he and his wife offered me a handsome advance on “work i hadn’t created yet.”
pretty damn generous. and it got me to thinking.
portland street with "arras" • this painting now hangs in our living room.
i wrote to a few other collectors who had bought my work from that show and they basically got me back on my feet in 1979. by 1980, i had found and developed a great studio on portland street in downtown boston.
my work was chosen for the first boston/now exhibit at the i.c.a. in 1981. i got gallery representation and a series of one man shows. more group shows. more one-man shows. some pretty nice reviews.
i was making a living, albeit a modest one, but a living. i didn’t have a car, a house or a health plan, but it was a living.
one of my paintings was acquired for the permanent collection of the boston museum of fine arts.
one day my gallery director came to visit the studio. i could tell from her reaction that all was not right with her. “this isn’t you,” she said. i then launched into a discourse about how an artist’s work evolves and changes. she launched into a discourse about how she had invested a lot of time and energy into developing a following for my work and that because the work was evolving, she was going to have to start all over again. in the end, we agreed to disagree. we left it there.
from that moment on, i began to doubt my motivation. was i following my bliss or was the path driven by the production of a product for this audience? it all got a bit murky. the whole racket kind of crashed in around me.
for the next year, i tried to work my way out of it. then i took a trip to get away from it all and start again fresh. but finally, i came to the decision to put the whole catastrophe in moth balls. my studio lease was up. and i owed the art supply store a lot of money.
i got a job. a real job. a paying job. still creative, but a real job. i worked my ass off and succeeded. in 2013, i retired from that job.
i had promised myself to try making art again when the time came. the time had come. but now it was not about trying to make a living from it, impress collectors, or curry favor with curators and gallery owners. this time it is an investigation, an inquiry, a pure path just for me.
and while i was hesitant at first, i was pretty immediately seized with the passion for it. it was like no time had passed. i looked at some of my older work and it was like i picked up right where i left off.
the first drawings/collages were simple things really, just pencil on paper then cut and reassembled. but they got me going. then, in the fall of 2014, i saw the matisse cut-outs exhibit at moma in nyc. i rediscovered a passion for color. this led me into the graph paper maquette/collages and got me thinking about color and larger scale.
it was time to find a space where I could make my kind of mess and not worry. rather than wrangle with short-term leases on lofts, i decided to build my own dream studio off the back of the house.
and that’s where i am today. i have no idea where the work will take me — i don’t think i really care. i am the sole arbiter of whether or not it succeeds. maybe that part of it really isn’t any of my business anyway.
i may never show it beyond this website. i may never sell a single thing. but that’s one of the nice things about getting a little older. you find out what matters and what doesn’t really.
and you figure out how to spend time on that stuff and let the all rest of it sort itself out.
oh, well.