Sticking with the figure, undergrad wins grant

COURTESY NATALIE FRANK The human body is the foundation of an art student's education.

It almost seemed a scene from a novel or movie. On a perfect spring day, I walked into Natalie Frank's, JE '02, fourth floor room where an easle and canvas took center stage, paints lay scattered across a nearby tabletop, and the nearest window stood open, a faint breeze rustling sketches. The walls were sparsely covered in simple works of art. Common room turned studio. A purposeful use of space. A good use of space.

And it seemed the most traditional and timeless of afternoons—an artist emerging from behind the canvas with paint-stained clothes. Yet I was to find that the afternoon would have been far too traditional for many tastes. Frank's passion is figurative realism, a style not currently in vogue in the American artistic academy.

Frank, an art major, admitted, "I really feel that all painting or drawing should start with the figure before you move onto the abstract. Yet if I want to do figurative work I have to do it outside of class because they offer no figurative classes to undergrads and don't encourage it."

Regardless of popularity of style, Frank is a talented artist. The statement really needs no qualifiers—needs no assertion of her comparative youth. She is, simply put, accomplished.

Prolific and in phenomenal control of her subject matter, her work has already graced its own gallery show at the Yale British Art Center. A self-portrait was also featured in an anniversary discussion of 30 years of women's art at Yale.

She understands the lack of interest in figurative painting: "It's all theory-based—all the faculty are artists who teach because they have to. They try to push their theories onto you, which might be fine for grad school, but I feel there needs to be more of an emphasis on exposure and training involving what is absolutely essential—the figure."

This passion, however, has recently earned her a prestigious and generous grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, a Canadian group that makes 10 awards each year—usually to graduate students. The group recently alerted Frank that she had received the award, even though she was an undergraduate.

The award is much more than just an honor: it comes along with $6,500. Coupled with the Yale-sponsored Bates fellowship, this leaves Frank with the chance to have the summer of a lifetime. She'll travel through Europe, immersing herself in a world that truly appreciates figurative realism. She'll hop from Greece to Italy to England, where she'll study under renowned artists Paula Rego and Michael Leonard (both recent visitors to the Yale campus). "The figure is such a part of European art history that it's approached in a totally different and reverent way," she explained. Finally she will settle in France for the last month of the summer for study at the Ecole de Beaux Artes.

And really, regardless of current academic tastes and direction, Frank sees Yale as a wonderful environment for a blossoming artistic mind. She pointed first to the JE Master Gary Haller. "He's so supportive of the arts, fostering an envir-oment in which there are real chances to meet artists and make lasting connections. Plus, each year they've set aside a specific basement space as a studio and granted me a Sudler."

She also mentioned her art professor, Kurt Kauper, as the one member of the faculty who has actively supported her desire to concentrate on what she sees as the elemental need for the figure.

"And then I've found a lot of people happy to mentor me, outside of the arts—the Chair of the Portugese Studies, David Jackson. He contacted me about Paula Rego, who is Portuguese. Since then, he and I have become great friends. We meet for tea every Friday. He tells me Portuguese myths with the hope that I can incorporate them into my art. "And honestly, that is what I truly came to Yale for," he said.

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