Kirby Fredendall

Summer Skies Blue 3: contemporary oil painting with water, clouds, sky, lake

2024

Kirby Fredendall was raised in Bucks County amidst the vibrant arts culture that has defined the area since artists first arrived to establish residence on the old farms and in the eclectic river towns. Among her first memories was falling to sleep to the pianist Anna Ward, married to artist Charles Ward, as Anna practiced in her home across the street. Later, she remembers times shared swimming in the pool and marveling at the stacks of wood on George Nakashima's remarkable property with her friend, his granddaughter, Maria. These memories, along with being raised by artists, forged deep ties to the arts for Fredendall who attended Duke University to study Art History, first in North Carolina and then in London. Following her studies in London she attended the Cordon Bleu, later to work as a pastry chef while she obtained her master's degree in Art Education and Painting. Becoming a painter was a natural progression for Fredendall who had been drawing and painting throughout her life. Her first exhibitions were local, followed by numerous national group shows in Philadelphia, Hartford, Wilmington, Harrisburg, and later New York. Solo shows followed, including one at the Michener Art Museum. She received the honor of the Rauschenberg Foundation's "The Power of Art" grant. Her most recent work explores her relationship to a lake in the Adirondack Mountains. While the paintings can be most directly defined as landscapes, they can be more accurately described as representations of the constantly changing energy of our relationship with not only ourselves, but also with those around us and with our environment. They examine the unbreakable but changeable connections that exists between forces both within us and without.