As a child growing up in Toronto, Frise didn’t go to kindergarten. Instead, she was a dog for a year. She taught herself how to jump up on the bed, drink water from a saucer and go down the stairs on four paws, which she says is hard to do. Her mother gave her dog biscuits for treats. Her aunt was worried she couldn’t talk and her mother said not to worry, she has various barks. Later on, walking home from school she saw bored dogs in backyards and so took them home and taught them tricks.
Frise’s paintings are intuitive driven by new states, stamina and heat. Interface with shadow, the sensuous relationship to the natural world. Entrances not exits. The wilderness within ourselves. She paints for contact, contact with the subterranean parts of herself. Mostly contact with the viewer. Like a song, a painting is a bodily experience. These hinge moments, she explores the places you cross over, go from one thing to another, that shift, the shift that changes your life.
Like her grandfather,a self taught artist and cartoonist, Jimmy Frise, Frise describes herself as living art.
Selected Exhibitions, Collections and Awards
Frise has shown at Van Der Plas Gallery in NYC, Gallery b Gallery in Maine, Parentheses Gallery in Halifax, and in Toronto at Drey Gallery, Paul Petro Multiples, Fran Hill Gallery, Art Toronto Fair, Toronto Outdoor Art Show, TAFFI, Toronto Alternative Art Fair, Lonsdale Gallery and PMC Wychwood Barns Gallery. She has done an artist residency at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC), Dawson City, Yukon. Frise has painted at the Brucebo artist residency in Gotland. She has received Ontario and Toronto Arts Council Grants and has won awards for drawing and watercolor in the TOAS. Frise’s work is in collections including the Osler, Hoskin, Harcourt, and George Hartman Collection.