Artist Profile

Dick Frizzell

Frizzell has mastered the ability to continuously reinvent his practice, traversing a range of themes and styles, though always through a highly skilled handling of paint. His works often tap the New Zealand psyche and strike a strong emotional resonance – be it playful humour, nostalgia, or rebellion. He pushes the boundaries of tradition, often intertwining high art and popular culture. This playful and idiosyncratic artistic sensibility invites the viewer to consider painting from a fresh perspective, as a culturally engaged and constantly reinvented artform.

Artist Profile

Dick Frizzell

Frizzell has mastered the ability to continuously reinvent his practice, traversing a range of themes and styles, though always through a highly skilled handling of paint. His works often tap the New Zealand psyche and strike a strong emotional resonance – be it playful humour, nostalgia, or rebellion. He pushes the boundaries of tradition, often intertwining high art and popular culture. This playful and idiosyncratic artistic sensibility invites the viewer to consider painting from a fresh perspective, as a culturally engaged and constantly reinvented artform.

Dick Frizzell's Background

Dick Frizzell is one of New Zealand’s most widely known and celebrated painters. With a remarkably diverse repertoire of imagery and styles, Frizzell has created a unique body of work.

His output includes works of landscape, cartoonish portraits, works of homage to notable artists including Picasso and McCahon, pointedly kitsch Kiwiana, text-based artworks, abstract paintings, and much more. Frizzell has been painted, printed, and drawn this seemingly boundless range of subjects on a diverse range of scales.

Frizzell has mastered the ability to continuously reinvent his practice, traversing a range of themes and styles, though always through a highly skilled handling of paint. His works often tap the New Zealand psyche and strike a strong emotional resonance – be it playful humour, nostalgia, or rebellion. He pushes the boundaries of tradition, often intertwining high art and popular culture. This playful and idiosyncratic artistic sensibility invites the viewer to consider painting from a fresh perspective, as a culturally engaged and constantly reinvented artform.

Frizzell studied at Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury in the 1960s. Subsequently, he pursued a career in advertising before becoming a full-time painter in 1995. He has exhibited extensively since, with career highlights that include the major travelling retrospective Dick Frizzell: Portrait of a Serious Artiste (City Gallery, Wellington, 1997), his residency in Antarctica as part of the Invitational Artist Programme (2005) and the publication of the monograph Dick Frizzell: The Painter (Random House NZ, 2009). In 2011 Frizzell penned It’s All About the Image (Random House, 2011) a rough guide to New Zealand Art History commissioned by the publisher.

His work is now held in collections throughout the country, most notably Christchurch Art Gallery, The Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery and Te Papa, Museum of New Zealand. He was commissioned to create some of the official artwork for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.