Frank Webster's Library
Frank Webster paints landscapes, from delicate, page-size watercolors to works on canvas that span close to ten feet in width. Above: Monacobreen IV, acrylic on canvas, 2024. He seems equally at home painting on a Zodiac in the frozen North—and in the even more frozen South, as he is working the finishing touches In his studio. Based on what he brings in to Studio 12 at the Art Students League, where he teaches watercolor techniques, I asked him about his library. This is what he wrote:
Q: As an artist and educator, you must own a lot of art books. How have you structured your library for how you use it?
I use my books constantly in the studio. I lay them out on tables while I am painting. They tend to be arranged by historical moment, subject matter, technical concerns, etc.
Q: When did it become evident that you were meant to be an artist?
I think a covert crayon mural on the living room wall I did as a little kid tipped my parents off that I was bound for a creative life.
Q: Do you remember the first art book you ever purchased? [what drew you to it, what did it mean to you, do you still have it, etc.]
I can't remember the specific book but remember a lot of books on American painters of the outdoors being readily available in my house when I was growing up.
Q: At what stage had you collected enough books to be concerned about having bookcases that were right for your own library?
I'm sort of at that stage now. I'm always trying to add more shelving.
Q: Where is your current library located?
In my studio, in Ridgewood, Queens.
Q: What are the best bookcases you have ever seen and what do you envy about them?
New York Public Library—the research room in the Lions. Floor to ceiling with rolling ladders... definitely enviable.
PR: How you organize your art, design and photo books?
In my shelves I organize by size. Certain piles accumulate with current interests on tables, etc.
Q: How do you maintain your library? For example, do you periodically take it apart and reorganize, or something along those lines?
Always a work in progress, always a little chaotic.
Q: Is there anything you might want to include about favorite libraries for doing research or just hanging out in?
We have great libraries in NYC... I've already mentioned the Lions, but the Morgan is another place worth exploring.
Q: What do you do when you run out of shelf space?
Oh that happens all the time. At this stage I take old books to the Strand.
Q: Have you ever had to move your library? What are the best and worst things about that situation?
Heavy art books!
Q; Do you consider being a bibliophile a special form of madness?
Yes. But I hope it isn't going away anytime soon.
Frank Webster is a painter who lives in New York City. Webster received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Webster is the recipient of numerous awards including the NYFA Fellowship in Painting, the Pollock Krasner and the Golden Foundation Individual Artist Award.
He has shown in solo and group exhibitions in New York at Isabel Sullivan Gallery, Blackston Gallery, Transmitter Gallery, Sara Meltzer Gallery and White Columns, to name a few. He has been awarded residencies at NES Artist Residency, The Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, Painting Space 122, Virginia Commonwealth University, The Ucross Foundation, The Corporation of Yaddo, The Ragdale Foundation and The MacDowell Colony among others. In June of 2022 he participated in the spring expedition of the Arctic Circle Residency, sailing the waters of the Svalbard Archipelago in a tall-masted Barquentine a mere 150 leagues from the North Pole.
Note: You can pick up a thing or two about drawing the Hudson River landscape at Frank’s upcoming workshop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 27th. Info at The Art Students League
And you can see some of @frankwebsterstudio watercolors from a recent trip to Patagonia at a popup show for @is.gallery.nyc [above], at Jim Kempner Fine Art, 501 West 23rd Street, FL 2, New York, NY