History

An exploration of Carlbom's history as a fine artist.

Early Years

Born New York City. Studies drawing with Robert Beverly Hale, Art Students League, NYC.

Studies with Belgian painter Jan Cox. School of Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA.
Cox was a founding member of the Jeune Peinture Belge group. Also associated with the art movement, Cobra; these artists gained inspiration from and embraced folk art and the work of children as untainted with the rules and conventions of contemporary society.

Carlbom as student, Monumental Painting Class

Interview.
A Painter’s Odyssey.

A Documentary of Jan Cox. Cinete Productions, 2008. Film by Bert Beyens & Pierre De Clercq.

In his view (Cox), all the technique a painter needed for the creation of a painting could be learned in a few months, the rest depended on creativity.

Grant: Ella Lyman Cabot Trust.

By identifying and funding promising projects, the Trust aims to have a meaningful impact on both the proponent of the project and on the project’s intended beneficiaries.

‍Carlbom explores the interaction between her own painting and that of her students at The Neighborhood Art Center, Boston, MA. She aims to embolden children to explore and benefit from their innate creativity.

Carlbom with student

Portrait 30 x 22 in.

1979

Studio and Loft. 76 Summer Street. Boston, MA. Collaborative Music, Poetry, and Art Events “Secret Riots”, “Frames.”

Clark Gallery Lincoln, MA; NAGA Gallery, Boston, MA. Collaborated with contemporaries and founded original gallery.

Fielding Dawson on Oppenheimer’s Chair, play by James Schevill, 1985.

Cover by Freya Carlbom.

“…a very good play…in such a handsome edition, with that compelling cover: an ace all around, the way it should be, the dream of author, artist and publisher."

EIGHTIES

Original Drawing

Cover, Dancing Bear Productions, MA

Moves back to New York City. Attends graduate program Columbia University School of the Arts. Studies painting with Leon Goldin, Jane Wilson, and multi-media artist Tony Harrison; explores lithographic technique with Robert Blackburn, a key artist in the development of twentieth century printmaking.

Object Study 30 x 22 in.

Object Study 22 x 30 in.

Artist's Proofs 1987

Two Objects 22 x 30 in.

Lithograph 1987

NINETIES

Still Life 7 x 8 ft. The Berkshire Museum. Curated by Lisa Phillips.

“… 'Best' in my view, is that which displays inventiveness, ambition, and accomplishment. I am partial to art that tests limits – whether it is a reconsideration of the traditional theme or a breakthrough into entirely unfamiliar terrain.”

Lisa Phillips, Exhibition Catalogue, 1989

Resident Fellowships:
Cummington Community of The Arts, Cummington, MA. The renowned progressive educational project (1927-1990’s) devoted to creative collaboration in the fine arts; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Mt. San Angelo, Sweet Briar, VA; Millay Colony, Austerlitz. NY; Weir Farm Art Alliance, Wilton, CT.

Group of Objects 59 x 84 in.

Oil on Canvas 1995

Grey Still Life 42 x 60 in.

Cummington Residency 1994

Gray Objects 26 x 26 in.

Black Objects 40 x 48 in.

Oil on Canvas 1995

“Although abstraction easily dominates the show, Freya Carlbom’s strangely assertive black painting of undefinable black vertical forms stands apart. Its shapes, which function like elements in a still life, are actually shades of grey-black.
An absence of any shelf or support gives no scale or anchor and allows the juglike units to seem monumental and to thrust themselves forward in a quietly disconcerting spatial dynamic.”

Phyliss Braff, “Black and White.” The New York Times, 1996

James W. O’Connor. Long Island Country Houses and Their Architects 1860-1940. Forward by Brendan Gill. Norton Press, 1997

Carlbom’s timely research and article about her architect grandfather, James W. O’Connor (1876–1952) brought his work out of obscurity. Architectural detail and the classic style of O’Connor’s buildings and estates were to become an influence.

W.R. Grace Indoor Tennis Court, Old Westbury, L.I.

W.R. Grace Offices (demolished), Hanover Sq., NY

Column, Finial Studies 24 x 18 in. ea. 2019

Delaware County NY and Connecticut

Trees, Triptych 56 x 80 in. ea. Acrylic on Canvas

Weir Farm Studio. Wilton, CT 2000

Sets up house and studio in Delaware County, NY. Completes landscapes and exhibits in Connecticut.

Grove 80 x 68 in.

Weir Farm Residency

CLASSIC WORK: John Gruen and Freya Carlbom 100 Pearl Street Gallery, Hartford, CT, 2002

EXHIBITION

Purse 58 x 83 in.

Oil on Canvas 2002

“Carlbom’s loose renderings of a lady’s purse are kissing cousins to pop artist Jim Dine’s robe series, though they reverberate as well in their looming rectangles in ambiguous space (and in their shoulder-wide, plate-glass window size), of Mark Rothko.”

“Their color is lively and surprising — a nearly phosphorescent green object on a brown paper-bag-colored-field. Their subject is amusing, too — a square, upright handbag outlined in black with paired black bows at each upper corner of its “face.” The five works (down one wall and around a corner) are best taken as a whole — as a kind of animated morphing of a single pocketbook from frame to frame (rectangular to squarish, skinny to fat, single to paired and back again).”

"Her works outsize his four or five to one, dominating the first impression of the show like illuminated signs."

‍Patricia Rosoff, “A Matter of Scale.” The Hartford Advocate, 2002