Lot Essay
"Each painting is a journey and an adventure. I don't understand the process completely. Perhaps no one can."
—Dorothy Fratt
Notably absent from the thriving New York art scene in the mid-1900s, Dorothy Fratt (1923-2017) forged her own path as an original Washington Color School painter from D.C. before moving to Phoenix and settling in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her striking canvases bear flattened shapes of complementary hues in sincere exploration of the effect one color has on its neighbor, drawing comparisons to Ellsworth Kelly and Helen Frankenthaler. Though her titles suggest physical grounds for her abstract investigations, Fratt's paintings are objects in and of themselves, each an unwitting study of the science of seeing and the underlying emotion the eye conveys: "Thus a line is not a line but a channel for color; no matter how thin, and a spot is not a spot but a beleaguered island of color, no matter how small. ...Fratt is concerned with the expressive power of color, not color as phenomenon" (R. Baranik, "Dorothy Fratt: Unexpected Intrusions," 1980). Fratt's experience of the Southwest landscape further nudge her practice into a category all its own; Baranik refers to a "feminine response to nature" (ibid.) as a foil for the machismo-saturated smog enveloping New York at the same time. Her space is reflected in her unbound stretches of pure color, and her joy in that space is equally lent voice. Given Fratt's precocious grasp of juxtaposition of forms, it is no surprise she spent a good deal of her career as a teacher, both in universities and privately, while simultaneously exhibiting across the country and placing work in many Western institutions.
—Dorothy Fratt
Notably absent from the thriving New York art scene in the mid-1900s, Dorothy Fratt (1923-2017) forged her own path as an original Washington Color School painter from D.C. before moving to Phoenix and settling in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her striking canvases bear flattened shapes of complementary hues in sincere exploration of the effect one color has on its neighbor, drawing comparisons to Ellsworth Kelly and Helen Frankenthaler. Though her titles suggest physical grounds for her abstract investigations, Fratt's paintings are objects in and of themselves, each an unwitting study of the science of seeing and the underlying emotion the eye conveys: "Thus a line is not a line but a channel for color; no matter how thin, and a spot is not a spot but a beleaguered island of color, no matter how small. ...Fratt is concerned with the expressive power of color, not color as phenomenon" (R. Baranik, "Dorothy Fratt: Unexpected Intrusions," 1980). Fratt's experience of the Southwest landscape further nudge her practice into a category all its own; Baranik refers to a "feminine response to nature" (ibid.) as a foil for the machismo-saturated smog enveloping New York at the same time. Her space is reflected in her unbound stretches of pure color, and her joy in that space is equally lent voice. Given Fratt's precocious grasp of juxtaposition of forms, it is no surprise she spent a good deal of her career as a teacher, both in universities and privately, while simultaneously exhibiting across the country and placing work in many Western institutions.