Angela Lynn Fraleigh is a photo-realist painter based in both Brooklyn, NY and Allentown, PA. Her themes include cultural notions of beauty, class, gender and role-play. Born in Beaufort South Carolina, she was raised in New York and attended Boston University on a Dean’s Scholarship earning her BFA in Painting. In between her undergraduate and graduate studies she founded the Hinged Artists Group in Seattle and has curated and participated in many exhibitions through it. Once graduated from Yale University with a MFA in Painting/ Printmaking in 2003 she was awarded the Alice Kimball English travel grant giving her free reign to explore great art of the ages as well as continue to develop her skills on a whistle stop tour of Europe. A few months later she moved to Houston, TX where she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston CORE Fellowship program.
Artist Statement:
"Questioning social constructs of beauty, class, gender and role-play I am interested in the complications of desire, what power people have available to them and how they use that power. These images serve as a means of escape from one’s personal histories but also provide a space to question these idealistic scenarios. Drawing on dramatic moments from literature and framing the romantic stereotypes that are created these images are complicated by obscured power structures. Ambiguity conceals where authority lies in these familiar images disrupting our understanding of these hackneyed relationships while bringing into the foreground the continual power struggles still fuelling our political, social and intimate relationships.
These tensions are heightened, as paint itself becomes a tool for the disturbance. It is a main protagonist in the story and a carrier of meaning. Violent and seductive, threatening and unpredictable it complicates the image leaving us unsure if the figures are being birthed or eaten away; if the paint is taking control, acting as saviour, interrupting, manipulating or providing the stimulus for the relationship. Physicality of the paint both cankers and covers the narrative caressing the fine line between victim and volunteer. There is a desperate human quality in the work, one that embraces the flawed hero…. you know what was supposed to have happened but you also know it didn't."
