Frank Eber: Plein Air Painter

Khanh Ho is writing the first Vietnamese American Detective Fiction ever. Why? Because being the first is a power trip.   Like what you read? Share, comment, subscribe.

 

 

One of the blessings of my life is that I have found myself almost like a fish: surrounded by all kinds of glittering, shiney people—whole schools of them. I don’t seek these people out; I don’t schmooze. I’m the kind of guy who gravitates toward the wallflower in the room. And yet these wallflowers turn out to be amazing. Go figure!

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Frank is just one such person. When I met him, he was nobody special: just this guy who liked to rock climb and was especially talented at it. Lanky, German, sandy-haired, he did manual labor—putting tile together. I heard he was pretty good at it; he showed me a three-ring binder once with pictures of his work encased in plastic…but I’m ashamed to say I don’t remember much. Frank did tiling for rich people’s houses in Malibu. Once he did Tommy Hillfiger’s house. “That was some good money,” he said.

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Frank had a really beat up Toyota truck with an old Mexican blanket on the seat. The Mexican blanket was kind of funky but I never mentioned it; I didn’t want to make him feel bad. His hands were always gnarly—white with the ravages of rock climbing and manual labor. Frank had a simple, plain quality—the ideal melding of the German and the vagabond: no-nonsense and un-flashy.

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For a period of three years, I traveled and (secretly) wrote. I had been writing and publishing since my early twenties but when I decided to go to grad school, I found that I didn’t have much time to do anything but obsess about my so-called dissertation. I would pick at that dissertation , like it was a pimple—day and night; when I wasn’t picking at it, I was worrying about the damage I did to myself, the scarring that would come, from picking—day and night. When grad school was over, I just decided to go off and write.

 

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It was a convenient time: my little sister had died in a crazy messed up way. I needed to take a break from life. So, traveling for a while seemed the best solution. Whenever I came back to the United States, I ‘d run across Frank. It was always pleasant. We’d drink a beer and he would tell me about another rich person’s house. He was always doing pretty well with these rich people gigs. They even wanted him to paint. “They sometimes pay me a lot of money to paint houses,” he said. “I like it, you don’t have to be always on your knees.”

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Shortly after I returned to the States for good and got myself a gig as a Creative Writing professor, Frank took off. I got a job in Iowa—the heartland of writing. “I promise I’ll visit and put tile in your house,” he told me. But not even my parents visited me. And then I heard through a friend of a friend that Frank had taken off. I thought I’d never see him again. Frank started traveling for a period of three years, too. Ostensibly it was for a rock-climbing adventure. I didn’t know that we were living parallel lives: While I did the worst flea-bag hotels of the Third World Countries, Frank was doing the best Climbing Spots in First World Europe. While I had been secretly writing, he was (secretly) painting.

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Now, Frank Eber is a successful artist. He’s a watercolorist. He’s won shows and competitions all over the world. He’s been admitted into some of the most prestigious watercolor societies as an esteemed peer. He’s represented by galleries. He’s also in demand as a teacher but not just any ordinary teacher: a headliner. Next summer he’s going to spend time on the islands of Greece, painting and teaching already great artists—talented artists–how to unlock the key to greater greatness.

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What I like about his art is that it’s all about craft. It’s technique-driven. And it’s no-nonsensey. He’s not trying to make experimental art. He hasn’t turned his back on representational art. “I paint what I see” is the first sentence of his artist’s statement and it flies in the face of the hobgoblin of postmodern conventionality. For him, it’s important to exactly capture the color on clouds; the reflections on a puddle; the way that a skateboarder moves in an urban landscape; the cows in a field–dappled blacks and whites in the shimmering nonchalance of browns.

Check this out:

 

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And this:

 

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And this:

 

Cows at pond, web

 

There is an honesty to Frank’s paintings. They are honestly commercial: he wants you to buy them. And this is also refreshing in a time when artists DON’T want you to buy their art, so that you will WANT to buy their art. Frank’s stuff is unpretentious: he is not trying to deconstruct. His art comes out of a humble craftsman tradition—a world that peaked with the Impressionists but remains a powerful force in the mainstream of modern America. Will I always live a parallel life with Frank? Is he my secret sharer, my brother-friend, my double, my imp? We are like pendulums at different extremes of an arc.

 

When I knew Frank, I was writing stuff that would be called pretentious: fancy stuff, avant garde. Now, I’m writing stuff that is cut out of a mold, shaped within the form of a tradition. He followed me into the world of travel but now it feels like I am following him into the world of conventional art. Detective Fiction is kind of like the world of art that Frank was trying to paint himself into. Looking at Frank’s beautiful paintings, I only hope that I can achieve his level of sophistication. Like Frank, I write what I see. But I don’t see cows. I don’t see skateboarders. I don’t see boats bobbing in a marina. I see death. I see death everywhere.

4 thoughts on “Frank Eber: Plein Air Painter

    • Thanks, Margot. I am not endowed with wealth but have been somehow made out well in terms of friendships. Nice people seem to find me!

  1. I know Frank’s work – it’s incredible. I love that he says, “I paint what I see” and stands by his vision without apologies. It’s a good lesson for all of us. Write what you’re going to write and leave it to everyone else to apply the labels.

    • Thomas–it is indeed rare nowadays for a fine artist to say that they paint “what they see”…because that is considered old-fashioned. We are supposed to doubt our senses if we are to be taken seriously. We are supposed to doubt all modes of perception, too. Isn’t that just plain silly?

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