Creating Fun, Colorful Art for 50 Years
Creating Fun, Colorful Art for 50 Years
Creating Fun, Colorful Art for 50 Years
About The Artist
Frank Strasser
A self-taught painter and native of Los Angeles, Frank Strasser is a celebrated local artist known for his acute sense of color and renegade Venice style.
After receiving his BA in English from Loyola Marymount University and touring Europe as a young man, he returned to LA inspired to paint, settled into a studio in Venice, and worked to capture the city’s natural beauty and wild spirit in acrylic-on-canvas.
Unencumbered by technical training, Strasser is an unabashed Primitive. His art celebrates the dream-like movie-set beauty of his native Los Angeles. His deceptively complex and luminous works are tinged with palpable nostalgia for retro LA.
Strasser’s iconic Venice scenes recently appeared in season seven of the ABC sitcom Blackish. Frank's words and works have been featured in Chatham County Living Magazine, The Free Venice Beachhead, The Venice Historical Society Journal, Venice Paparazzi Magazine, and The Argonaut, among others.
Frank lived, painted, and performed music in Venice, California, for 40 years. In December 2017, it was time for a change of scenery and new inspiration. So he drove 2.500 miles from Venice Beach to a new home in Savannah, Georgia. He painted the mysterious low country and learned to drive a trolley and conduct history tours.
After four years in The South, Frank hit the road again, migrating west along historic Route 66. Life has come full circle. Strasser has resumed his lifelong love affair with the colorful landscape of The Golden State, living and working in Huntington Beach, California---a half-hour south of his hometown, Culver City, The Heart of Screenland.
About The Art
Fifty Years of Painting
From 1959 to 1967 I went to Saint Gerard Majella Catholic grammar school, where the last hour of the last day of every week was devoted to an art class of sorts. From 3 to 4 every Friday, we were assigned art projects based on seasonal themes like Halloween, or Religious holidays like Easter. After conjugating sentences, reciting passages from the Baltimore Catechism verbatim, and memorizing dates of key historical events, I loved expressing myself with fat crayons and getting lost in the miracle of creativity.
One hour of art a week was never enough. So religiously, every Saturday morning, I watched a TV show called Learn to Draw, hosted by John Gnagy. With my Rice Krispies snap, crackle, and popping, marshmallows melting in my hot chocolate, pencil, eraser, and sketchpad at the ready, I drew along with my first real art teacher. As an artist, I am essentially self-taught.
I first began painting at age 12. One afternoon my Little League game was rained out. I loved baseball. In frustration, I turned to art. My parents had given me a beginner paint set for Christmas. There sat the unopened box in my closet, still wrapped in plastic. The idea of painting intimidated me. Thunder crackled and rain pelted loudly down on the corrugated aluminum roof of our patio as I spread newspapers out on a tabletop near the fireplace and stared at my paints and brushes working up the nerve to paint something.
I was always drawn to nature, so naturally, for my first painting I copied a Walt Disney animation of an otter, I think it was. I have no idea where my earliest works ended up. Back in the day, Polaroid cameras were considered state-of-the-art technology. Other than a few grade school crayon drawings my mom must've stashed in a musty box up in the attic, the images in the painting galleries are the earliest works I have any remaining record of today
Over 50 years, I've created hundreds of paintings. I have painted in a variety of styles, virtually whatever captured my imagination went onto the canvas. I figured the most sensible way to organize a retrospective of my work, was chronological. This is a start. There will be more galleries to come and more extensive descriptions of each painting. A picture is worth a thousand words as they say, so feel free to visit my painting galleries. Enjoy!