FRANK E. BALLATO III

ARTIST PROFILE

A Little Help from DAD

  This series is a homage to my children, their thought process, and their path of creating.  I have collected my children’s sketches from the time they could put marks on paper as documentation of their growth through art.  At some point in time we all were able to create without the common misconception that “I’m not an artist”.   By embracing my children’s abilities to be that artist that everyone has inside before labels or restraints cloud their willingness to create without the limitations, I have found the start of an artist, truly untrained. 

Children are born with a developing path of thoughts, actions, and mannerisms that prime each’s own mark making on the world.   As parents, people have already experienced such developments and use their memories to guide their offspring.  Through the vicarious nature of wanting to keep ahold of that child-like state of mind, matter, and experience as our own, people have used their offspring as a tool for their own self-expression.  Through this series of paintings, I can experience the mentality and developmental intelligibility of child to father, father to child. 

I have re-created my son’s small art works into large-scale format paintings with the intention of allowing a viewer to see through an uninhibited, untarnished idea forming, raw creator viewpoint.  As an artist I perceive beauty in the everyday and bring that perspective to fruition amongst an audience.  This series stands amongst my past ideas of remembrance of place, childhood, and time.   Memory is a strange component of the past allowing the present to take hold and lead that experience towards a future.