About the Artist

Portrait Sketch from life by Yoko Radke 

Oil on canvas 16 x 20    1998

Fred grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii. His early interest in art was manifested by copying cartoons as a child and later progressing to drawing portraits from photographs as a teenager. After high school, he deferred his art aspiration by fulfilling his military obligation with the Air Force, but after which, his indecision in pursuing an art career persisted. He eventually decided to forgo an art career and earned a B. S. degree in electrical engineering at the University of Hawaii. A career in the telecommunication industry and later as a consultant in microwave and satellite transmission did nothing to change his ever-long passion for art. He finally retired to build a career in fine art. While mainly self-taught in representational art fundamentals, he pursued his passion for drawing under the tutor of the late Franz Griessler, an Austrian-born artist and a contemporary of Egon Schiele. He subsequently took workshops to further his craft with the noted watercolorist Robert E. Wood and oil painters: T. M. Nicholas, Kevin MacPherson, Ken Auster, Scott Christensen, Scott Burdick, and Jove Wang. Watercolor was his choice of medium when he started painting, but in 1997 he shifted his focus to oil painting. He mainly draws inspiration from the human form by its complexity of form, beauty, and grace. Outside the studio, he mostly enjoys the challenge and the process of Plein air painting: reacting to the visual elements of shapes, patterns, and colors that attract attention and using them to articulate the emotional response. Whether the subject matter is landscape, seascape, figurative, portrait, or still life, and regardless of the medium, Fred strives to capture the essence of the place, truth, mood, atmosphere, and the elusive quality of light in his art. While his art is continually evolving in style and content, he views himself as an impressionistic realist painter. Over the years, his art has earned awards and recognition. He has been interviewed for an article on oil portraits in American Artist Magazine and featured in North Light Book, "The Best of Drawings" for selected charcoal nude drawings. His artwork is exhibited in Honolulu by Nohea Gallery and Cedar Street Galleries and collected by patrons nationally and internationally. He lives with his artist wife Ingrid in Honolulu, and together they divide their time between painting and traveling the world.

Selected Shows, Awards, and Publications

2008 Accepted into Oil Painters of America (OPA) Western Regional Juried Exhibition hosted by Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

2007 Featured in North Light Book, Stroke of Genius - The Best of Drawings

2001 Featured in an interviewed article, “Bold Portraits,” in American Artist magazine

1999 Awarded Annual Excellence in Book Illustration by the Hawaii Book Publishers Association

1997 Collection by the State of Hawaii Art Museum

1995-2006 Won numerous awards in Juried Exhibitions in Hawaii                      

Affiliations

Oil Painters of America, Associated Member in 2007