“I paint everyday subjects - places, people and things that make an impression on me. I am a realist in the sense that I try to give the subject its appropriate weight and mooring in space. At this point in history, after the twentieth century, a painter has an immense stock of visual ideas to draw upon, and through my work I’m coming to terms with those possibilities, adapting them to my strain of figuration.”
-Joe Frost
Joe Frost was born in 1974 in Sydney. From 1992 to 1995 he attended UNSW College of Fine Arts, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), majoring in Painting and Drawing. His first substantial exhibition was ‘Cityscapes’, a group show at Level Gallery, Newtown in 1999 with Nina Herbertson and John Bokor. Following this exhibition Frost joined Legge Gallery, Redfern where he exhibited until 2009. He has since been represented by Watters Gallery, Sydney.
Frost’s approach to painting and drawing has developed according to the rhythm of his regular solo exhibitions. From 2000 to 2004 he presented annual series of suburban and industrial landscapes, and made forays into still life. In 2005 Frost switched from oil to acrylic paint, and made the first of his city and harbour paintings, subjects he has continued to develop. He has painted nudes, portraits and figures in the urban environment. In 2009 Frost made his first non-figurative paintings, representations of pure forms in illusory depth.
In the first decade of Frost’s exhibiting career he has developed a broad foundation for continuing work. His style has shifted in response to his subjects and he has sought out subjects that offer the forms and spatial opportunities appropriate to his aesthetic aims. Objectivity towards the subject has emerged as an important quality in Frost’s work, but there is abstractness in the arrangement of his paintings and this, paradoxically, forms a part of their likeness.