Frank Spink: Watercolorist & Ceramicist

Pottery

In 1998 I fulfilled a desire that dated back to my undergraduate colleges days to at sometime extend my art interests from brush and paper to clay and glazes. Thus, at that time a began to wheel throw and hand build in earthen ware and stoneware. My work has avoided moving toward production pottery while remaining strongly focused on functional pottery of one-of-of-a- kind designs where each piece rests within my design thinking and style but remains unique from any other piece of my pottery.      

Watercolors

Frank Spink's watercolor style has evolved over many years. Initially while living in the San Francisco Bay Area, from 1958 to 1967, He paints in both representational and abstract styles but always with landscapes and architecture as my primary subject sources. On moving to the Washington DC area I became involved with the Sumi-e (East Asian) styles learning the traditional techniques and using rice papers and hand ground ink and brushes of many different hairs. His objective has been to develop a personal style that uses materials and composition concepts to develop a personal style "American Sumi-e" as a bridge between the Western and East Asian traditions. This has led me to exhibit paintings in this bridge style in exhibitions of the Virginia Watercolor Society, Potomac Valley Watercolorists and in the Sumi-e Society of America winning many from the organizations with paintings what fuses elements of both traditions.