Frederic Marsanne began painting thirty years ago in France. He has traveled the world and studied government and business but always returned to his love of artistic creation. Stunned by Pieter Bruegel the Elder's investigations into the drolleries in ordinary life, his sense of the whimsical and the fantastic, inspired no less by the works of Chuck Close, Gerhard Richter, and Lucian Freud, amongst other artists, his works concentrate on the representational, the narrative and, through abstraction, the psychological.

Frederic Marsanne chronicles his experiences through his at times substantial application of oil to canvas. In the weighty brush strokes we learn of his family’s history during World War II, the experiences of his travels, world politics and their effect on Marsanne’s ideals of freedom, justice, and democracy. Always interested in the influence of world history and political issues on the creative mind, Marsanne finds that in all works of art, there is a left side and a right side to the piece and in his paintings the viewer indeed discovers this dual vision.

For the Religion show Frederic Marsanne draws from first hand experience of sociological divergence and the improbable balance of world religions to create art that brings this paradox to the surface. His representational paintings are abstracted through energetic, pushed oils challenging the viewer of Marsanne’s narrative to search into their own attitudes and emotions about this diverse subject.

Marsanne’s painting, ID, features a Muslim woman wearing her traditional Niqab, revealing just her eyes, the only identification she is allowed or chooses to exercise. Three Religions creates a triptych featuring Pope John Paul II with a headdress of a Menorah and vestments of Muslim symbols - seven cand;es of light, seven Shi'ites pray. Jesustein expresses the dichotomy of Christianity and Judaism at the point in history where the two religions diverged with the image of Christ on the cross wearing a yarmulke. Through humor balanced with a sense of the sublime we question the role of religion in our modern society and speculate on humanity’s pious or not-so-pious future.

Frederic Marsanne has exhibited at MKL GALLERY in Somerville, MA, Ambassador Galleries in Soho, NY and was chosen to exhibit in a juried show at the New Rochelle Art Association Annual in New Rochelle, NY. His work can now be found online at marsannegallery.com.

Frederic Marsanne in seven quotes:

1. I am not in the business of selling art; I am in the art of buying your attention.
2. Everything is a study.
3. There is a right side and a left side in all paintings. Any artwork is political.
4. I went to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to become a painter.
5. The red in the Passion of Jesustein is for blood; the green and the blue – for the human condition.
6. As I paint them, this dead fish surely smell like dead fish; but in the aquarium, they look alive and free.
7.  At its best, design is art, only wearable.