Dick Frizzell: The Painter

Dick Frizzell

• sample pages

Dick Frizzell's images populate our world - you find them on t-shirts, on TV ads, in shop windows, on wine bottles, on cushions and t-towels, and in art shows. People appropriate (or borrow) his images in much the same way that he too appropriated many of the images he has painted over the years. He's reached iconic status in NZ - we love him, he's one of our own.

Dick has a great story: After going to art school he found himself in his 20s married and with a young family to support. He worked in advertising until 1974, when his artistic urges made him leave the ad agency to take up working in the vege markets in the early hours of the day so that he could pursue his art.

His paintings combined the pragmatics of an adman's need for a compelling motif with the visceral pleasures of expressive modernist paintings. His first images of gaudy fish-tin labels and comic strip characters caught everyone's imaginations. Dick's talent, energy and his deadpan humour meant that his art was highly successful.

Dick Frizzell: The Painter contains all of his major paintings, the story of his life in his own thoughtful and highly articulate words, and an essay by Hamish Keith on Dick's work and its place in the New Zealand art world.