Louise A. Frechette, P.S.A.

Louise was born in San Francisco in 1942. She has had one-person shows in galleries in four states. She was the recipient of the National Grumbacher Gold Medallion Award at the Wind River Art Artist Guild, Dubois, Wyoming. Louise's work has been featured in a number of museums, including the Attleboro Museum in Attleboro, Massachusetts; The Brickstore Museum, Kennebunk, Maine; and the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, College Station, Texas. The Brickstore Museum has acquired one of her paintings for their permanent collection donated by the estate of author Betty Joyce. Calling herself Painter of the Ocean, Louise has been painting the ocean since 1978 and has been an ocean swimmer in San Francisco. She speaks with reverence and fascination of the sea, saying her artwork is an attempt to transpose life's mystery into something as beautiful - but more tangible. "I love storms. I like it when the earth moves underneath you and brings you to your knees. The waters represent everything that God is; it is where the conflict between people ends."

The oil paintings and pastels hanging in the gallery are abstract representations of ocean blending into sky, with lush vivid colors shining with colored powders to bring out the light. Louise started using pastels by chance when she ran out of oils at an outdoor show and someone gave her pastels. Pastels - the word comes from the French pastiche - are pure powdered pigment ground into paste and rolled into the colorful sticks. Pastels have no liquid binder that may cause the surface to to darken, fade, yellow, crack or blister with time, so that pastels painted in the 16th century look as fresh today as the day they were painted. However, through the use of gold and silver leaf she adds another dimension, creating what she calls "living paintings." The leaf will tarnish - going greenish or brown - in 10, 20 or 30 years, giving the work a living quality within the timelessness of the pastel painting. "My oils have a very different feel from the pastels. I have been an oil painter for 40 years, yet when I do oils, I have to think. I am very detached from my work when I am using pastels." (Much of the above come from an article in the York County Coast Star written by Nina Heiser.) Louise will be the featured artist in The Pastel Journal, August 2008 issue. REVIEWS: *York County Coast Star, Living Arts Section, March 1999, describes Louise work as "...absolutely incredible...". *York Weekly, Art Critic Rose Safran, 1998, "Louise Frechette with wonderful merging soft color abstraction". *Saco Reader, Editor, 1997, "The pastel paintings she now produces are radiant, spiritual, wonderful, awesome, majestic, magical, powerful, brilliant, theusarus-exhausting to describe works of timeless art". *York County Coast Star, Living Arts Section, August 1996, Virginia Ray, "Jean Briggs, who owns Mast Cove Gallery, says of Louise ‘She is a very exciting artist to have in my gallery, one who is a joy with whom to work'". *Portland Press Herald, York county Extra, November 1994, Kathie Marcie, "Louise Frechette won the Grumbacher Gold Medallion Award...Her painting, ‘L'eau Sauvage', was chosen the best from thousands of works submitted" (National exhibition in the Wind River Art Artist Guild, Dubois, Wyoming). Other galleries to find Louise's art: Christopher Bell Gallery 200 Alverado at the Doubletree Monterey, California Redfield Artisans Northeast Harbor, Maine Domestic Blends Rockport, Maine Galerie Art & Culture Vieux - Montreal, Qc